Former premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), who resigned following the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) landslide defeat in last year’s nine-in-one elections, yesterday left for the US to serve a year as a visiting academic at Harvard and Stanford universities.
Jiang left a day after being named as one of the Presidential Office’s senior advisers.
The Presidential Office announced a new list of senior advisers and national policy advisers, who are to remain in their positions until May 19 next year.
Photo: Chu Pei-de, Taipei Times
It is likely to be the last adviser appointment before President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) second term ends.
The list includes former Presidential Office secretary-general Timothy Yang (楊進添) and former Examination Yuan president John Kuan (關中) as senior advisers — the other 24 positions were chosen by reappointment.
Jiang was a political science professor at National Taiwan University before he joined the Ma administration in 2000, taking the positions of minister of the research, development and evaluation commission, minister of the interior, vice premier and premier.
Jiang earned his doctorate at Yale University, specializing in political philosophy and Hannah Arendt’s political theory.
He cited Arendt twice in a speech given before leaving the Cabinet, referring to her idea of the public sphere and her words saying that a life spent entirely in the public realm would become shallow.
The former premier left the Cabinet amid controversies, including his decision to forcefully evict Sunflower movement protesters from the front square of the Executive Yuan on March 24 last year, a move that reportedly left scores of protesters injured.
Academia Sinica researcher Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), one of the leading protesters in the Sunflower movement, condemned the appointment.
“Though being Ma’s adviser is not something that could be seen as an honor, the nation’s official titles, however, should not be used as personal favors,” Huang said on Facebook on Friday after the announcement.
“Jiang, who caused so many injuries and has not yet offered any apology or been held accountable, is in no position [to receive the title],” he said.
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