Control Yuan members yesterday voted to impeach former Presidential Office spokesman Ting Yun-kung (丁允恭) over allegations that he had extra-marital affairs when he was director of the Kaohsiung Information Bureau.
The Control Yuan’s review committee voted to impeach Ting 11-0.
In its report, the Control Yuan said that his actions contravened Articles 1 and 5 of the Civil Servant Work Act (公務員服務法), and Article 2 of the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act (性騷擾防治法).
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
In September last year, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) approved Ting’s resignation after the Chinese-language Mirror Media magazine reported that he had relationships with four women at the same time while serving as the bureau’s director in 2014, even though he was engaged to be married at the time.
It also quoted one of Ting’s former girlfriends as saying that they had sex several times in his Kaohsiung office during work hours and that she had terminated three pregnancies at Ting’s insistence so as not to affect his career.
Control Yuan members Wang Mei-yu (王美玉) and Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) wrote in their investigative report that Ting brought dishonor on the civil service and tarnished the image of government officials.
Ting headed the bureau under then-Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), before serving as Presidential Office spokesman from May 2019 until his resignation.
Yesterday, Ting said in a statement that the impeachment was an unfair decision.
“It was wrong to have sex at the city government office,” Ting said. “[But impeachment] is an unjust decision, as the Control Yuan members had already set their sights on persecuting me.”
The Control Yuan was wrong to say that sexual harassment was involved, Ting said.
“It was a normal relationship between a man and a woman. I never used my position to intimidate her and no sexual harassment took place,” he added.
“During our relationship, she mostly took the initiative in contacting me,” he said. “She used emotional blackmail when asking me numerous times for money.”
“By going to the media and telling her story of our private affairs, I became a victim of sexual harassment,” he added.
The report failed to reveal her harassment of him, he said, adding that he found it unfair that these details were not included.
The report gives the public an erroneous understanding of gender equality and sexual harassment, Ting said.
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