Political appointees will be added to the list of officials required to undergo background checks before taking office if the Legislative Yuan approves a pending bill, an Investigation Bureau official said yesterday.
Existing regulations published by the Ministry of Civil Service only require background checks on career civil servants in charge of security affairs or affairs involving major national interests, said Pan Hung-mou (潘鴻謀), a section chief at the bureau.
A draft law proposed by the ministry that has been forwarded to the legislature for consideration would expand the checks to all types of civil servants, including political appointees, Pan said.
Speaking during a meeting of the legislature’s Judiciary, Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, Pan was responding to a call by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) that the Investigation Bureau conduct comprehensive checks on all Cabinet members, especially on whether they are citizens of, or hold permanent residency rights in, a foreign country.
Wong and the DPP have challenged the allegiance of certain officials in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration who either once held, allegedly still hold or have applied for a US green card.
In particular, the DPP has demanded the resignation of Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊), who obtained US permanent resident status in 2005 while serving as the ambassador to Guatemala, but renounced the status one month before assuming his ministerial position on May 20.
Wong yesterday questioned the Investigation Bureau’s failure to conduct background checks on Ou while he served as an ambassador.
Wu Ying (吳瑛), deputy director-general of the bureau, said that the regulations governing background checks on civil servants took effect on Aug. 29, 2003, before Ou had been appointed ambassador to Guatemala.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back