President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) nomination of Control Yuan members on Thursday drew more negative reaction from the opposition and other critics yesterday, with one pundit saying that Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) had been involved in the “politically motivated” nomination process.
Wang Mei-yu (王美玉), former president of the Chinese-language China Times, made the list of 29 nominees because of Wu, who could have a personal reason for his endorsement, radio host Clara Chou (周玉蔻) wrote in her column published yesterday on my-formosa.com, an online news Web site.
Wu, a reporter at the China Times before entering politics, was a close friend of Want Want China Times Groups chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), who owns several media outlets, including the China Time, magazines, television companies and online news Web sites, Chou said.
Recommending Wang, who is Tsai’s right-hand man, could benefit Wu media-wise and give him a boost in his competition with other potential 2016 presidential aspirants, including New Taipei Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential primary next year, Chou said.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said the Control Yuan nominations were “horrible” and appeared to be Ma’s way of rewarding his confidants — given that most of the nominees are controversial figures or former government officials with bad reputations.
“It seemed to us that Ma could care less about what other people think, because his term will be up in two years,” DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) told a press conference in Taipei.
As an example of a problematic nominee, Lin cited former Food and Drug Administration director-general Kang Jaw-jou (康照洲), who was accused of covering up cases of starch products contaminated with maleic acid during a nationwide scandal in May last year.
Former Council of Indigenous Peoples minister Chang Jen-hsiang (章仁香), former KMT lawmaker Chiang Yi-wen (江綺雯), former Public Construction Commission minister Fan Liang-shiow (范良銹) and former Council for Economic Planning and Development deputy minister Nancy Chen (陳小紅) were all Ma’s subordinates, Lin said.
Chang’s performance at the Council of Indigenous Peoples had been criticized by other KMT lawmakers, while Fan was also accused of malfeasance when he served as director of the Central Emergency Operation Center during Typhoon Morakot, which left 677 dead, 22 missing and caused more than NT$100 billion (US$3.3 billion at current exchange rates) in damages in August 2009.
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