While President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is struggling to have his nominees for the Control Yuan’s next term approved by the legislature, the outgoing head of the government watchdog yesterday called for its closure, saying the move would be beneficial to the nation and the public.
“Close down the Control Yuan and that will bring the nation fortune because the system is fraught with flaws and it is not easy to find people who are qualified to serve as Control Yuan members,” Control Yuan President Wang Chien-shien said during a talk with reporters yesterday.
However, not everybody agrees with Wang.
Central Election Commission Chairperson Chang Po-ya (張博雅), who has been nominated to succeed Wang, quickly rebutted his argument.
Nearly 150 countries worldwide have supervisory systems that handle public complaints, Chang said, adding that the existence of the Control Yuan is advantageous to the nation.
Wang’s contention is wrong, Chang said, but she would rather not level criticism against Wang because “he is about to leave the office.”
The work that the Control Yuan has done, such as its investigations into the high-profile Lafayette-class frigate scandal and the case of “pseudo-farmers” cashing in on elderly farmers’ pension, proves that it is useful to the nation, Chang said.
Wang yesterday said the Control Yuan is doomed to be abolished.
Aside from its systematic flaws, finding people of noble character and unquestionable integrity to staff the government watchdog is hard, Wang said.
Wang, known for his harsh criticism of some of his colleagues, yesterday said that some Control Yuan members have been “bewitched by power,” although they started out being nice people when they took office.
“Power drives a person mad. Some Control Yuan members were well-behaved when they were appointed to the position. Less than half a year later, they went mad. However, they are forgivable because they are human beings,” Wang said.
As to public criticism that the Control Yuan is a “toothless tiger,” Wang said: “The Control Yuan has teeth. Not only that, it can bite a person to death. Even worse, when the Control Yuan wrongly accuses a government official, it does not draw condemnation, but applause.”
A Control Yuan member can make a fuss over a trivial thing involving a government official that was reported in the media and establish a case against that official simply because of a personal grudge, Wang said.
When a case has been established, said official may be subpoenaed and the case may drag on with no end in sight, Wang said.
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
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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