Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) acting chairwoman Vice President Annette Lu (
"This commission against corruption will be authorized to investigate any DPP member who is suspected of being linked to illegality or corruption, including the president, vice president, the premier, and county commissioners and city mayors," Lu said yesterday at a news conference.
Lu said integrity was the DPP's founding principle and had also enabled it to win power and recognition. However, a series of corruption scandals before the Dec. 3 local elections had seriously damaged the party's reputation.
Therefore, President Chen Shui-bian (
"I know that it is a thankless task for an investigator, but each member will go all-out -- maintaining a detached and fair attitude -- to make things clear, and hopefully the DPP can clear its name," said chief of the commission John Chen (
John Chen said the commission will handle cases reported from all levels of society, and will also actively investigate.
In addition, if DPP members who are investigated are found to be involved in corruption, the party's central standing committee will punish them or expel them from the party, he said.
As long as reports of corruption include the real name, phone number and address of the person making the accusation -- as well as concrete evidence -- the commission will investigate, Lu said.
Lu added that since her time in the post of acting chairperson will be quite short, the most important task during this period is to re-elect a chairperson and make the process upright and transparent.
The party will hold its election for the post on Jan. 15.
"Of course we are happy to see that we will conduct reforms but the central standing committee is a collegiate system -- all the decisions on reforms depends on the committee's resolution," Lu said.
The president has expressed to her the importance which he places on the election and had stressed that he would not intervene in it, she added.
"President Chen said that he did not prefer any specific candidate and will remain detached from the poll," Lu said.
The DPP will hold two TV debates for the three candidates for DPP chairperson. The first will be held on Jan.7 in Taipei, according to Lu.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS