Ex-minister says he was victim of ‘horrible system’

Former minister of labor Pan Shih-wei (潘世偉) yesterday insinuated that he was ousted because he had got in somebody else’s way of raking in money.

Pan tendered his resignation during a telephone call to Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) on Thursday morning after a magazine reported about his alleged extramarital affair. Jiang approved his resignation later that day.

However, one day after leaving his post, Pan lashed out at the government’s “administrative system” on Facebook, saying that the “ganging up for self-interests” inside the system is “truly horrible.”

“Those [who ganged up] are high-ranking civil servants. They know how to plan and use the budget, and how to enrich their own coffers and use their own people to justify the process,” Pan said. “It is all in the name of the public, but in fact it is to line their own pockets.”

“It was simply because I was in the way of their plan to amass fortune,” he said.

Pan also rebutted media reports saying he failed to attend a meeting with the premier on the day that he tendered his resignation, calling the report “a machination.”

“After I called the premier in the morning, I received a call from the Executive Yuan for a meeting at 11:15am. I bumped into New Taipei City Deputy Mayor [Chen Shen-hsien (陳伸賢)] and Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) in the Executive Yuan,” he said.

“Before entering the premier’s office, I also happened to meet central bank Governor [Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南)], who told me that it must have been someone from your [agency who had schemed against you]. I seconded his comment,” the former minister said.

“So it was absolutely nonsense to claim that I did not meet with the premier,” he said.

“Does the media machination have to be like this?” he asked.

Media reports quoted Executive Yuan spokesman Sun Lih-Chyun (孫立群) as saying that Pan tendered his resignation verbally to Jiang and failed to meet with the premier.

Pan said that when he met with the premier, before the spokesperson made the statement, Jiang had agreed not to make public his resignation for the time being.

“We needed to make our comments in line with each other [following the spokesperson’s remarks], so we had to say that I would meet the premier in the afternoon,” Pan said, adding that Jiang had made the decision “only under group pressure.”