Ruey-Beei Wu (吳瑞北), a National Taiwan University (NTU) electrical engineering professor and a candidate for university presidential, yesterday filed an administrative litigation against the Ministry of Education and the school, asking that the university redo its presidential election from the beginning instead of from the final round of voting.
As a candidate, he would be able ask the court to speed up the judicial process and help resolve the controversy more effectively, he wrote on Facebook.
The university’s presidential election in January became embroiled in controversies after NTU finance professor Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) was elected president and then accused of failing to disclose a conflict of interest.
Photo: Lin Hsiao-yun, Taipei Times
Kuan was an independent director and a member of the salary and auditing committees of Taiwan Mobile, while company vice chairman Richard Tsai (蔡明興) was a member of the election committee.
In May, the ministry ordered the university to repeat the election due to the conflict of interest, but the school refused and instead filed an administrative appeal requesting that Kuan be appointed as president based on the election.
On Monday last week, the ministry asked NTU to repeat the final round of voting with the same five candidates — Kuan, Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences director Chou Mei-yin (周美吟), physics professor Chang Ching-ray (張慶瑞), Graduate Institute of Networking and Multimedia professor Chen Ming-hsien (陳銘憲) and history professor Chen Jo-shui (陳弱水).
The ministry’s request was “not only illegal, but also illogical,” Wu wrote on Facebook, adding that student groups and the presidential election committee were unhappy with it.
“The university should repeat the election from the initial qualification review of all eight candidates, including Kuan and myself. The three rounds of voting conducted by the university council and presidential election committee following the review should, of course, be redone as well,” Wu said.
While the school had the right to file an administrative appeal, it cannot defy the ministry’s order to launch a re-election, he said.
By turning to the legal system, he hopes to bring a peaceful end to the controversy, which has caused “NTU’s reputation to hit rock bottom,” Wu added.
The other two candidates in the initial round were former Academia Sinica vice president Wang Fan-sen (陳汎森) and National Tsing Hua University vice president Wu Cheng-wen (吳誠文).
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked