The Control Yuan yesterday let Keelung Mayor Chang Tong-rong (張通榮) off the hook for interfering with the police over the detention of a suspect by voting against an impeachment motion filed against him for the second time.
Control Yuan members Yang Mei-ling (楊美鈴) and Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) had re-filed the motion against Chang after their first attempt was voted down eight to four by the Control Yuan on July 5.
An impeachment motion can only be resubmitted once.
“I have tried, but I really wish there was a third chance,” Yang said outside the Control Yuan.
She said the only thing she could do now was try to make such lobbying a criminal offense.
Chang was indicted for influence peddling in October last year after he pressured the police into releasing a woman, surnamed Liao (廖), who had allegedly assaulted a policewoman while under the influence of alcohol in September.
The Keelung District Court on July 26 sentenced Chang to one year and eight months in prison — suspended for five years — and ordered him to pay NT$2 million (US$66,900) to the Treasury and perform 200 hours of community service. The case can still be appealed.
Democratic Progressive Party spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said the public was outraged by Chang’s actions and had hoped that the Control Yuan could uphold justice, but they have been disappointed.
“The result raises questions as to whether the Control Yuan let Chang off the hook to prevent the case from jeopardizing the KMT’s chance of winning next year’s mayoral election in Keelung,” Lin said.
Keelung City Government spokesman Lee Liang (李梁) said the city administration respected the Control Yuan’s decision.
Chang could not be reached for comment yesterday because he is on a trip to China.
Additional reporting by Lee Hsin-fang
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching