A bill that would ban Examination Yuan members from working in China, slash the body from 19 members to three and reduce their term from six years to four passed its preliminary review at the Legislative Yuan yesterday.
Examination Yuan members who work in China would be fired, according to the proposed amendments to the Organic Act of the Examination Yuan (考試院組織法) reviewed by the Legislative Yuan’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee.
The penalty for working in China was added to the bill after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) and other party lawmakers submitted a motion.
As one of the branches of the government listed in the Constitution, there is no excuse for the Examination Yuan to allow its members to hold jobs in China, Lee said, adding that DPP lawmakers specifically named China in the clause.
The bill is designed to reduce bureaucratic redundancy and save public funds, lawmakers said.
The president must nominate a new Examination Yuan member three months before a serving member retires, and no more than 50 percent of Examination Yuan members should come from the same political party, the bill reads.
The bill stipulates that future members of the Examination Yuan must be published authors in an academic or technical field, possess a decade of work experience as a professor or senior civil servant, or be a noted author or inventor, among other requirements.
The committee also deliberated whether the Examination Yuan should preserve the institution of meetings for all members, but did not come to a conclusion.
Examination Yuan Secretary-General Lee Jih-shyuan (李繼玄) said at the session that eliminating the meetings could interfere with the Examination Yuan’s constitutional duties.
DPP Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) disagreed.
The committee agreed to set the issue aside for cross-caucus negotiations.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods