Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday urged people not to trivialize the qualifications of new Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairman Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) simply because he used to be a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Su made the remarks on the sidelines of the opening ceremony in Taipei of InnoVEX, an exhibition of start-ups, one day after the DPP used its majority in the Legislative Yuan to push through approval of Lee’s appointment, despite opposition lawmakers trying to block the vote.
“The situation we saw on election day on Nov. 24 last year, where people had to wait in line for two to three hours and voting continued [at some stations] despite the closure of polls, drew fierce public criticism. The government is determined to prevent similar occurrences in the future,” Su said.
Lee was nominated to head the commission because he was well-regarded when he was a judge and has extensive practical experience as deputy minister of the interior, deputy minister of justice, a Yunlin County commissioner and as a lawmaker, he said.
It is exactly because the government is determined to address the root of the problems marring the elections in November last year, and prevent them from happening again, that the Executive Yuan decided to nominate Lee, Su said, without saying if other qualified candidates without partisan pasts were considered.
“Lee immediately canceled his DPP membership following the nomination, and we should not be too quick to dismiss a person’s experience and way of doing things simply because of their past party membership,” he said.
Lee was nominated in February to fill the vacancy left by Chen In-chin (陳英鈐), who resigned the day after the Nov. 24 elections and the 10 referendums that were held alongside them. His handling of the polls and subsequent vote counting was heavily criticized.
Due to Lee’s longtime affiliation with the DPP, his nomination to take over the supposedly non-partisan Central Election Commission has faced fierce opposition, and CEC member Chang Sue-chung (張淑中) resigned in protest on Tuesday.
Su said that as Lee’s nomination had received a majority of votes in the legislature, people should focus on his future performance.
“I hope his performance will satisfy the public,” he said.
Asked to comment on Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Chairman Terry Gou’s (郭台銘) accusation that Lee’s nomination was designed to ensure President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) re-election, Su said the tycoon should avoid engaging in mudslinging based only on partial information that his aides have given him, without elaborating.
Gou is seeking the nomination of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for next year’s presidential race.
The premier has not yet decided on the date on which Lee would officially take office, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not