The Control Yuan’s decision to impeach National Taiwan University president Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) was “wrong” and “without legal basis,” his lawyers said on Tuesday evening, as the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) voiced support for him.
“The Control Yuan clearly had no legal basis for considering the payments Kuan received for his column in a magazine as proof of him taking on a part-time job,” the lawyers said in a statement.
Kuan did not take up a position or sign a contract with the magazine during the time he was a minister without portfolio, they said.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
The Control Yuan on Tuesday voted seven to four to impeach Kuan on the grounds that he had breached Article 14 of the Civil Servants Work Act (公務員服務法), which prohibits civil servants from taking on part-time jobs.
Kuan was found to have regularly written anonymous opinion pieces for Chinese-language Next Magazine in return for NT$650,000 (US$21,083 at the current exchange rate) per year, while serving as minister without portfolio from 2012 to 2015.
Any work that is “continual, regular and long-term” constitutes a part-time job, and while civil servants are allowed to publish articles, they can only do so occasionally and must receive a monthly wage of less than NT$8,500 or nothing at all, the Control Yuan said.
Citing regulations published by the Ministry of Civil Service, Kuan’s lawyers said that civil servants are banned from doubling as editors, journalists, managers and presidents, or any other position, at media outlets, but are allowed to write columns for newspapers and magazines, as long as their articles are unrelated to their position.
The right to publish is part of a person’s freedom of speech and is protected under the Constitution, the lawyers said, adding that the act does not say the government can restrict this right for civil servants.
“We believe the public will judge the case fairly in terms of whether intellectuals should be allowed to share ideas and discuss their analysis of social trends in newspapers and magazines,” the lawyers said.
Kuan not only received NT$50,000 per month for his articles, but was given an extra month’s wages every year, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) wrote on Facebook yesterday.
“Was that his year-end bonus? He received NT$1.9 million in total. That looks like a part-time job ... to me,” he said.
Kuan was paid differently some months because he wrote more in those months, not because he received any bonuses, KMT spokesperson Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) wrote on Facebook.
“The Public Functionary Service Act does not ban civil servants from publishing articles. If the DPP thinks that should be illegal they can amend the law with their legislative majority,” he said.
“They are unwilling to do that because ... all they want is to defame Kuan,” he said.
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