Former chief of the general staff General Tang Yao-ming (
Tang, 64, had served the army for more than four decades. In a handover ceremony witnessed by Minister without Portfolio Chiu I-jen (
As a civilian, Tang will no longer enjoy the privileges of a general first class. Those privileges would have included the life-long provision of sedans, drivers and staff officers.
As a general first class, he would have been considered on active duty for life. In becoming defense minister, Tang had to retire from the military and change his status from an active-duty general first class to a reserve general first class.
Former military leader Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) is another example of a general first class who volunteered to retire from the military to take a civilian post in the government.
Hau, like Tang, served as the chief of the general staff and then as defense minister.
He wasn't forced to give up his active-duty military status, however, until he was appointed premier by former president Lee Teng-hui (
Hau, however, accepted the defense minister's portfolio as a military officer before the law mandating the appointment of a civilian defense minister was passed.
The landmark defense law was passed two years ago and stipulates that the defense minister must be a civilian.
The law is to be put into force March 1, along with the amended organizational law pertaining to the defense ministry.
According to the two defense-related laws, the defense minister is to be paramount leader of the military, while the chief of the general staff is to be downgraded to a chief of staff to the minister.
As the first defense minister of a restructured military, Tang is expected to have both the power and the resources to push ahead with the military reforms that have yet to be completed.
In the past, the chief of the general staff was given greater power than the defense minister, according to instructions by late president Chiang Kai-shek (
This was to control the military through the chief of the general staff and avoid accusations of dictatorship. In this pseudo-Cabinet system, the defense minister was merely a figurehead.
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