Legislative watchdog Citizen Congress Watch is seeking votes online to choose a Chinese character that best represents the legislature’s performance for the past year.
The annual poll, which has been held since 2008, has chosen characters with negative meanings over the past seven years, with characters such as “useless” (廢), and “fake” (假) among the list.
Organizers say the vote shows widespread skepticism among the public regarding the legislature’s efficiency and its ability to enact meaningful policies.
This years’ vote, which is being held through Friday, invites netizens to choose from 30 characters, including a slew of such words such as “anger” (怒), “depression” (鬱) and “paralysis” (癱).
Several characters that refer to major incidents that occurred this year also made the list, such as “slop” (餿), which seems to refer to the adulterated cooking oil scandals that rocked the nation for months; “occupy” (佔), also appears, in an apparent reference to the student-led Sunflower movement in which protesters occupied the Legislative Yuan’s main chamber for almost 23 days in March and April.
The group is also holding a vote that invites netizens to choose the 10 most important events that occurred at the legislature this year.
Citizen Congress Watch executive director Chang Hung-lin (張宏林) said the vote serves as a reminder for people to keep a close eye on the legislature’s performance.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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