The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday dismissed allegations that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) nomination of Control Yuan members is a way of rewarding his confidants and called the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) accusation “political manipulation.”
The list of nominees made public on Thursday has set tongues wagging about the backgrounds of the candidates, many of whom are Ma’s former subordinates or controversial figures with pro-KMT political affiliations.
The DPP called the nominations “political rewards” and “afterward punishment imposed upon those who dared to stand against the government,” as several incumbent Control Yuan members who have made their reputation by following closely on the government’s malfeasances failed to make the list.
KMT Culture and Communication Committee head Fan Chiang Tai-chi (范姜泰基) said in a statement yesterday that the nominees have been chosen according to a principle that the Presidential Office announced earlier, which is “gender equality and generational change.”
Fan Chiang said that the nominations for members of the Examination Yuan and Control Yuan “have made a breakthrough in terms of the gender ratio,” and all of the nominated members, except for the presidents and vice presidents, are “under the age of 67, which is the EU’s retirement age.”
The nominations also excluded those who have been appointed for at least two terms, he added.
“President Ma has repeatedly spoken about his determination to uphold the Constitution, and he is hoping that the Control Yuan members will execute their power in accordance with the Constitution and stand above partisan politics,” Fan Chiang said, adding that this is why Ma “discarded unnecessary political ideologies and political considerations” in the nominating process and focused on the nominees’ “expertise and virtues and integrity.”
He dismissed the DPP’s criticism as “blind assumptions without a factual basis” that were brought up “for the sake of criticizing something.”
People would not agree with this kind of malicious political manipulation, Fan Chiang added.
However, DPP officials were not the only ones who called the list into question.
The Alliance to Abolish the Control Yuan, the Civil Constitutional Conference Promoting Front, Citizen’s Congress Watch, the Judicial Reform Foundation and the Taiwan Forever Association issued a joint statement on Friday slamming what they called the lack of legitimacy of the Control Yuan member nominations and calling on the Legislative Yuan to undertake a “thorough review” of the list.
Also depicting the nominations as Ma’s political rewards and saying that a majority of people have come to doubt the need for the Control Yuan, the groups criticized the Control Yuan’s “deliberate inaction” during Keelung Mayor Chang Tung-jung’s (張通榮) influence-peddling case and the case of former prosecutor-general Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) leaking confidential information to the president.
Neither of the indicted civil servants has been impeached, with each facing two impeachment attempts by the Control Yuan, “showing that the institution is no longer one that can execute its power independently,” the groups said.
“The nomination of Central Election Commission Chairperson Chang Po-ya (張博雅), nicknamed Ma’s ‘hired thug’ for her speedy revocation of Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng’s (王金平) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) membership during the Ma-Wang political feud in September last year, was not the only controversial one,” the statement said.
By listing various officials, academics and media personalities with political persuasions in the institution and offering zero justifications over why certain members are to keep their positions while others cannot, “the Ma administration is intending to expand its executive power by putting its thumb on the Control Yuan scales,” the groups said.
They called on legislators, whose approval the nominations still require, “not to be held captive by the party’s will and show up at the meeting to strictly review the nominees to avoid over-concentration of power.”
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