President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) never instructed the Ministry of Justice to preserve the Special Investigation Division (SID) in his capacity as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, the party said yesterday, dismissing allegations made in the latest edition of the Chinese-language Next Magazine.
In a story published yesterday, the weekly said that Ma had sent a letter from the KMT chairman’s office to the ministry in October last year, in which he said that the SID has more advantages than disadvantages, and that the ministry should not abolish the division amid controversies over its wiretapping practices.
KMT spokesman Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中) said the party’s think tank — the National Policy Foundation — researched whether the unit should be scrapped last year and sent a report to the ministry in October for reference after Ma reviewed it.
“The KMT often sends the think tank’s research reports to different government bodies for reference. The SID report was one such case, it was not an instruction [from the KMT chairman],” Yang said.
The issue of the unit’s abolishment emerged in the wake of the so-called “September strife” between Ma and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) last year.
During the strife, it was discovered that the division had placed the telephone numbers of people in unrelated cases under a single wiretapping warrant amid an investigation that yielded allegations that Wang had improperly lobbied prosecutors not to appeal a non-guilty verdict handed down to Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).
The president has denied playing a role in the investigation into Wang’s alleged improper lobbying and has dismissed allegations that he instructed Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) to look into the case and remove Wang from his post.
FAST TRACK? Chinese spouses must renounce their Chinese citizenship and pledge allegiance to Taiwan to gain citizenship, some demonstrators said Opponents and supporters of a bill that would allow Chinese spouses to obtain Taiwanese citizenship in four years instead of six staged protests near the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday morning. Those who oppose the bill proposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) demanded that Chinese spouses be granted citizenship only after renouncing their Chinese citizenship, passing a citizenship test and pledging allegiance to Taiwan. The demonstrators, who were protesting at a side entrance to the Legislative Yuan on Jinan Road, were mostly members of the Taiwan Association of University Professors and other organizations advocating Taiwanese independence. Supporters of the bill, led
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A shipment of basil pesto imported by Costco Wholesale Taiwan from the US in the middle of last month was intercepted at the border after testing positive for excessive pesticide residue, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday. Samples taken from a shipment of the Kirkland Signature brand of basil pesto imported by Costco contained 0.1 milligrams per kilogram of ethylene oxide, exceeding the non-detectable limit. Ethylene oxide is a carcinogenic substance that can be used as a pesticide. The 674kg shipment of basil pesto would either be destroyed or returned to its country of origin, as is the procedure for all