The Ministry of Civil Service on Thursday tabled a proposal that requires all elected officials to undergo checks on “loyalty to the nation.”
The proposal includes all elected representatives, including the president, vice president, city mayors, county commissioners and legislators, as well as city and county councilors.
Up to now, checks on loyalty to the nation have been conducted only on civil servants who handle highly classified information and those involved in matters deemed important to the public interest.
Currently, security clearance checks of civil servants with regards to character and loyalty to the nation are done according to the government’s Special Regulations on Civil Servants Involved in National Security and Major Public Interests (涉及國家安全或重大利益公務人員特殊查核辦法). The Examination Yuan and the Executive Yuan are to upgrade the regulations to become an act.
The ministry first tabled the loyalty check proposal in March. At the time, the proposal covered people originally from China looking to become residents in Taiwan, foreigners applying for naturalization and people who have family members who have lived in China, Hong Kong or Macau for a year or more.
A ministry spokesperson said the current regulation applies only to people employed in civil service, covering 1,066 job categories. When it is upgraded to an act, it will apply to more than 300 political appointee positions, the spokesman said.
Elected officials, including the president, vice president, city mayors and county commissioners already undergo background checks according to the Civil Servant Services Act (公務員服務法), while the other positions do not, he said.
The ministry added a number of supplementary resolutions, which proposed that elected officials who are involved in national security and issues important to the public interest have their character and loyalty to the nation checked so that they correspond to the responsibility associated with the position.
The Examination Yuan on Thursday did not make a decision on the draft bill. Should the draft bill be approved by the Examination Yuan, it will be sent to the Executive Yuan, which could forward it for deliberation and possible approval at the legislature.
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:
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