Examination Yuan President Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) yesterday denied saying that there was no legal problem with Taichung City Mayor Jason Hu's (胡志強) pension, and emphasized that a probe into the matter was still underway.
"I never said that. I think there must have been some kind of misunderstanding by reporters who were working on the story," Yao said in a press release.
Yao was referring to reports in yesterday's Chinese-language newspapers that Yao had "cleared Hu's name by announcing that there is no legal problem with Hu's pension."
The reports said Yao made the comments to a group of Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers who visited him to discuss the matter on Friday.
"The truth is that I have asked the Ministry of Civil Service to investigate Hu's qualification for the pension that he has been earning, and the investigation has not yet been completed," Yao said. "I am pretty upset about the inaccurate reports."
With the Taichung County commissioner race heating up ahead of the Dec. 3 local government elections, Hu's pension has become a target for his political enemies, who are attacking him for counting a ten-period of study in the UK toward his generous pension.
According to Hu's pension application, he was the liaison, secretary and eventually the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) party affairs supervisor of the Republic of China's Public Service Association between Sept. 6, 1975 and Aug. 1985.
Hu added these 10 years to his other public sector service, describing his occupation as "KMT party worker," and reported a total of 25 years of service in his application. Critics say Hu was actually studying in the UK during this period, and that his total service should therefore only have been counted as 15 years. They say Hu should return additional pension payouts he got from including the ten years.
When a legislator said that Hu had transformed his years of KMT work into years of government service, Hu said the pension decision had not been in his hands.
"After I left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1999 and applied for my retirement in 2000, the human resources department submitted a list of all my past duties to the Ministry of Civil Service to determine my pension in accordance with the law," Hu said. "It had nothing to do with individual choice."
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