Legislators across party lines criticized Friday’s announcement of the removal of Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office head prosecutor Chen Shou-huang (陳守煌) as an attempt to help President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) eliminate Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) said the evidence collected by the legislature’s Discipline Committee suggested that Chen did not violate the Prosecutors Code (檢察官守則) because his failure to report Wang’s alleged lobbying request constituted only a minor flaw.
“The ministry has clearly blown the matter out of proportion …especially given that Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) still sits comfortably in his post,” Lu said.
Lu was referring to a telephone call Wang made to Chen on June 27 allegedly asking him to prevent Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office prosecutor Lin Shiow-tao (林秀濤) from appealing the acquittal of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) in a breach of trust case.
Chen’s removal came after the ministry’s Prosecutor Evaluation Committee concluded on Dec. 14 that he was involved in the lobbying case and should be given a demerit.
The committee also recommended that Huang be dismissed from his post for his unconstitutional reports to Ma about details of an ongoing investigation into the alleged lobbying case.
KMT Legislator Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井) said the ministry should have transferred Chen to a similar position, rather than disgracing him by downgrading him to an ordinary prosecutor.
KMT Legislator Wang Huei-mei (王惠美) said the committee would not have recommended just a demerit for Chen if it had found him guilty of improper lobbying.
“The purpose of founding the independent committee … is to prevent ministry officials from covering up for each other, but maybe it should be disbanded now that the ministry does not seem to honor its decisions,” Wang Huei-mei said.
DPP Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said given the eagerness of pro-Ma media outlets to declare Wang Jin-pyng guilty of undue lobbying following the committee’s decision, the ministry’s quick removal of Chen could have been an attempt to sabotage the speaker’s chances of winning a lawsuit regarding his KMT membership.
“If the plot succeeds, Ma will finally be able to remove Wang Jin-pyng from the speakership and eliminate all ‘obstacles’ to his pandering to China,” Pan said.
Wang Jin-pyng was stripped of his party membership on Sept. 11 due to alleged improper lobbying, but he is allowed by a court decision to retain his membership until the lawsuit is settled.
DPP Legislator Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡) said the ministry’s efforts to hunt down anyone not on its side indicated that Minister of Justice Lo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) was nothing but Ma’s political hitman.
“On the one hand, the ministry defended Huang despite the committee’s recommended dismissal, and on the other, it removed someone who should only have received a demerit,” Wu said. “How can we ever trust a ministry which has such dramatic double standards?”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods