The Presidential Office yesterday fended off criticism that Presidential Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) nominations of 11 Control Yuan members runs counter to a long-term plan to abolish the watchdog agency, saying that its stance remains unchanged.
The current Control Yuan president, vice president and 16 members were all nominated by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and approved by the previous legislature, Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said.
“However, [Tsai was elected in] last year’s Jan. 16 presidential election with a new mandate; the new nominations made to fill the current vacancies ... will make it more representative of that mandate,” he said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Tsai’s nominees were also picked to ensure that the Control Yuan is able to function properly — supervising government agencies and offering assistance to people whose rights have been infringed on due to miscarriages of justice — before the Constitution is amended to pave the way for the agency’s abolition, Huang said.
All 11 nominees are top-notch professionals in their respective fields, which include the environment, public health, the law and human rights, social welfare and finance, he said.
“We must stress that it has been our consistent stance to abrogate the Control Yuan through constitutional amendment. This stance remains unchanged,” Huang said.
According to Article 7 of the Additional Articles of the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution, the Control Yuan “shall consist of 29 members, including a president and a vice president, all of whom shall serve a term of six years.”
Their nominations require the consent of the legislature.
Huang’s remarks came a few hours after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) held a news conference in Taipei to label the nominations a slap in the face of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
“The DPP has for years advocated the abolition of the Control Yuan and the Examination Yuan... Yet after the party gained power, it swiftly nominated candidates to fill the vacancies at the Control Yuan,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Tang Te-ming (唐德明) said.
Given the nominees’ backgrounds, their selection was apparently a “political reward” from the DPP for their service or electoral support, Tang said, citing attorney Yang Fang-wan (楊芳婉), who represented former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) in her corruption trial, and People First Party Deputy Secretary-General Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄) as examples.
Other nominees include former Presidential Office secretary-general Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟); former activist and Taipei City Government employee Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲); Deputy Minister of Overseas Community Affairs Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇); former independent legislator Walis Perin; Lin Sheng-fong (林盛豐), a professor; Chang Wu-shou (張武修), a physician; lawyer Kao Yung-cheng (高涌誠); former DPP legislator Jao Yung-ching (趙永清); and judge Tsai Chung-yi (蔡崇義).
Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) introduced the 11 nominees to the public at a news conference at the Presidential Office Building after they met earlier in the day with Tsai.
Saying the nominations were aimed at maintaining the Control Yuan’s role of supervising and safeguarding human rights, Chen Chien-jen said he hoped the nominees’ experience would help them undertake the watchdog’s duties.
As the nominees would only be serving the remaining term of their predecessors, their terms are set to expire on July 31, 2020, he said.
“We have communicated with Legislative Speaker [Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全)] about the confirmation of their nominations. He promised to arrange for a review of their cases in the legislature as soon as possible,” Chen Chien-jen said, adding that he expected the nominations to be approved within one to two months.
The Council of Agriculture yesterday signed a Taiwan-Australia Agricultural Cooperation Implementation clause to open a new export market for the nation’s pineapple crop. The clause is an addition to existing cooperation measures, it said. China on Friday last week abruptly announced that it would suspend pineapple imports from Taiwan starting on Monday, on grounds that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful organisms” in shipments of the fruit. The public and private sectors have since joined hands to purchase the local fruit to help the nation’s pineapple farmers. Canberra has requested that all pineapples for export to Australia have their crown buds removed,
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group might have lost its right to distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 and the ability to fulfill a contract in Taiwan, civic groups Taiwan Citizen Front and the Economic Democracy Union said yesterday. In a radio interview on Feb. 17, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center, said that last year, Taiwan was close to signing a contract to buy doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but that the deal was halted at the last moment, with some speculating that Chinese interference was to blame. On Monday last week, the center
A Tainan taxi driver is the Taiwanese with the longest name, after he last month changed it so that it now contains 25 characters, the Anping District Household Registration Office said. The 47-year-old man, formerly known as Huang Hsin-hsiang (黃鑫翔), applied for the name change on Feb. 26, in the hope that it would bring him good luck. His new name starts with Huang Da-lan (黃大嵐) and adds another 22 characters, meaning “Huang Da-lan is the blessed darling and sweetheart of the god of joy, god of wealth, god of misfortune, god of Earth and all the gods,” it said. With
Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) yesterday said that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) “should not follow the Democratic Progressive Party’s [DPP] direction,” after KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) had said that China posed a threat to Taiwan. Chiang was quoted by Reuters as saying during an interview that China’s “one country, two systems” formula for an unification with Taiwan “has no market” in the nation. Chiang also described China as the major threat to Taiwan, Reuters reported. Jaw, who has expressed interest in running for KMT chairman this year and in the 2024 presidential election, wrote on Facebook that
RSS