Although there are still three years left before he completes his term of office, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) runs the risk of turning himself into one of the most incompetent presidents in history, Control Yuan President Wang Chien-shien said yesterday.
Ma’s approval ratings “did not drop to a little over 10 percent without reason,” Wang said in an article. “President Ma has been seeking to create his own legacy. There are still three years to go, but [his legacy] has probably already been decided: Incompetent.”
Citing as an example of the rules that govern the establishment of care centers for vegetative patients, Wang said the prevalence of bureaucracy in the government is helping define Ma’s legacy.
In the article, entitled Do vegetative patients like to go to the toilet?, Wang said officials at the Ministry of the Interior who were in charge of the rules were so “out of touch with reality” and “wrong-headed” that they showed complete disregard for those who cannot afford to take care of family members who are in vegetative states.
Under the original rules, any care center accommodating 60 or more patients in a vegetative state was required to have 10 lavatories to qualify as a licensed institution giving a patients-to-lavatories ratio of 6:1, while ministry officials only agreed to count two stool pans as two lavatories after petitioners spent five or six years repeatedly appealing to the ministry to revise the rules, Wang said.
The government is duty-bound to take care of the disadvantaged and when it fails to do so civil groups are forced to undertake the task of looking after those people, yet these same groups then face bureaucratic hassles in trying to meet the government’s rules, Wang said.
“Why is the president to blame for such a thing? Because people believe that the minister was appointed by the president as well as the officials at the ministry who were chosen by the minister, thus the president must be held responsible for their incompetence,” Wang said.
He suggested the government replace incompetent chiefs of subunits within Cabinet ministries in order to get rid of bureaucracy. If bureaucratic politics continue, then a simple Cabinet reshuffle does not make any sense, he added.
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
New Taipei City prosecutors have indicted a cram school teacher in Sinjhuang District (新莊) for allegedly soliciting sexual acts from female students under the age of 18 three times in exchange for cash payments. The man, surnamed Su (蘇), committed two offenses in 2023 and one last year, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. The office in recent days indicted Su for contraventions of the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act (兒童及少年性剝削防制條例), which prohibits "engaging in sexual intercourse or lewd acts with a minor over the age of 16, but under the age of 18 in exchange for
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty