Legislators should be obliged to disclose potential conflicts of interest and forbidden from simultaneously holding positions with private firms, a legislative watchdog said.
“Some legislators become wealthier during their term, and while some might just be good at managing their finances, there is a concern that some people have not avoided conflicts of interest and might have made wrongful earnings,” Citizen’s Congress Watch executive director Chang Hung-lin (張宏林) said on Thursday.
The Legislators’ Conduct Act (立委行為法) forbids lawmakers from holding positions in state owned enterprises, but they are still permitted to hold positions in private companies, while financial disclosure requirements focus on assets and liabilities rather than earnings.
The number of legislators who voluntarily reported outside positions and board memberships fell to 61 this year, compared with 68 prior to last year’s legislative session, Chang said.
“The vast majority of those who report do so because they are in harmony with conflict of interest standards, but we are suspicious of those who are not willing to provide any information,” New School for Democracy board chairman Tseng Chien-yuan (曾建元) said.
“Avoiding conflicts of interests is important because legislators review the national budget and often have relationships with for-profit enterprises. If we want a clean democracy, these relationships must be transparent to allow for supervision and prevent legislators from using their influence in committees illegitimately,” Tseng said.
Chang welcomed plans to introduce live coverage of legislative proceedings this session, adding that more is need to guarantee true transparency.
“We want substantive, not just surface, transparency, particularly about anything going on under the table,” he said. “Many of the party caucuses proposed congressional reform legislation at the beginning of the current legislative term, but after a year, none of them are listing it as priority.”
He also called for legislators-at-large to be given priority in receiving committee assignments compatible with their expertise during the upcoming legislative session, adding that parties should also demonstrate that candidates for committee convenorships have sufficient understanding of legislative rules.
Many experienced legislators are likely to be unwilling to pursue the posts as they prepare to run in elections for local government heads next year, he said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS