Officials in the upper echelons of government are behind the controversial rehiring of former civil servant Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) to a Taiwan Provincial Government post, Control Yuan member Chien Lin Hui-chun (錢林慧君) said.
Chien Lin, in charge of the investigation into making Kuo foreign affairs secretary of the streamlined Taiwan Provincial Government in Nantou, said yesterday that the position had been tailor-made to land Kuo a public sector retirement pension.
Kuo had previously been an official at the now-defunct Government Information Office in Toronto, Canada, but was dismissed in 2009 for deriding ethnic Taiwanese in several articles published under his pseudonym, Fan Lan-chin (范蘭欽).
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
His dismissal disqualified him from receiving his pension, estimated at about NT$4.65 million (US$154,000).
He assumed the Taiwan Provincial Government position in March — two weeks before he turned 65 — and is scheduled to retire in July, after which he is expected to receive a monthly pension of NT$70,000.
The process of how Kuo was offered the post at the Taiwan Provincial Government was “fraught with flaws,” Chien Lin said yesterday.
In a three-stage selection process, Kuo managed to beat the other six applicants only after “senior officials of the Taiwan Provincial Government” delivered a final rating of the seven candidates, sources said.
In the first stage, Kuo had been ranked the lowest among all the candidates by a panel composed of heads of Taiwan Provincial Government units.
By the second stage, he was judged third-highest by another panel, sources said.
Yet Kuo was eventually selected the most-qualified applicant because the score of the third stage accounted for 50 percent of the final result — compared with 20 percent and 30 percent for the first and second stages respectively — and senior officials awarded Kuo nearly full marks in the third round, Chien Lin said.
In the first stage, Kuo scored 15 out of 20; in the second stage, he scored 24.22 of 30 — losing to the best candidate by a margin of 0.67 points; while at the final stage, he received 48 out of 50, which was eight points ahead of the second-best candidate, sources said.
Chien Lin said she thought senior Taiwan Provincial Government officials had been ordered by their superiors to ensure that Kuo secured the position.
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