Advocates for civic oversight of the legislature and government yesterday criticized the Control Yuan for what they called the procedural barrier it uses to curb citizens’ efforts to look into political donations.
The Citizens’ Congress Watch, Alliance of Awakened Citizens and an online community known is “g0v” that promotes open data and a transparent government said that with the legislature set to start vetting the candidates vying for a seat on the Control Yuan, many members of the public are starting to wonder exactly what the institution that has cost them NT$4.5 billion (U$150.3 million) over the past six years has been doing.
“President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has pledged to establish a clean government and pushed for ‘sunshine acts,’ but, despite being the agency responsible for documenting political donations, the Control Yuan has been lagging in setting regulations to allow more public access to those records,” Citizens’ Congress Watch executive director Chang Hung-lin (張宏林) said.
Although the hard copies of the documents are accessible to the public, there are no digitized versions, “which means that people have to go to the Control Yuan building if they want to examine the papers,” Chang said.
This regulatory hurdle is akin to discriminating against those who do not reside in Taipei, he added.
Members of g0v who have been visiting the agency to review the political donation records said that they have at times been “harassed” by staff who prohibited them to take photographs of or even hand-copy any documents.
The groups called on Control Yuan members to look into the matter before their terms end, while urging the nominees to vow to revise the regulations if elected.
“Also in need of civic oversight is the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法), as it has become politicians’ ‘fig leaf’ due to its multiple loopholes,” Chang said.
The groups said that all the politicians who have been charged with receiving bribes recently have used the act to claim that the money in question was a political donation and thereby avoid harsher punishments for venality.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS