A Control Yuan investigation into the election of former National Development Council minister Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) as National Taiwan University (NTU) president in January has found both the university’s election process and the Ministry of Education’s regulations on university presidents to be flawed, a source said on Sunday.
The Control Yuan will soon complete a report on the case and send it to the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee for discussion on Aug. 16, the source said, adding that the committee would determine whether corrective measures should be carried out.
According to the draft report, the current university president system has inherent flaws and the procedures in which the NTU approved Kuan’s application to serve as an independent director at Taiwan Mobile Co while working as a professor of finance was also flawed, the source said.
According to Article 13 of the Public Functionary Service Act (公務員服務法), public-sector employees are banned from taking part-time positions.
The Control Yuan has impeached 42 civil servants for contravening the article, including former minister of education Wu Maw-kuen (吳茂昆), but so far no one has been impeached for serving concurrently as an independent director at a private company, the source said.
NTU has said that, in practice, about 90 percent of its professors apply for approval after they have already begun their part-time posts. However, the university has banned applying for retroactive approvals since 2016.
A key issue the probe aims to clarify is whether NTU has violated its own regulations by approving Kuan’s part-time director position retroactively, the source said.
Asked if there is double standard in the way the ministry handled Kuan’s case, the source compared Kuan’s case with that of NTU College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science professor Chung Char-dir (鍾嘉德).
Like Kuan, Chung was also hired by Taiwan Mobile to serve as an independent director and member of the auditing and remuneration committees, but Chung applied to NTU according to regulations and the university approved it on June 9 last year, before Taiwan Mobile formally announced both their appointments on June 14, the source said.
However, Kuan did not apply for approval with NTU until August last year and because the university was waiting for him to do so, it did not give a formal reply to Taiwan Mobile about both their applications until October, the source said.
Kuan was elected NTU president on Jan. 5 and was scheduled to take office on Feb. 1, but the ministry in April did not approve the appointment, saying the election process was flawed.
According to the ministry, Kuan had illegally worked at Taiwan Mobile and had failed to disclose those positions before the election to avoid a conflict of interest, as Taiwan Mobile vice chairman Richard Tsai (蔡明興) was a member of NTU’s presidential election committee.
Additional reporting by Ann Maxon
ANOTHER EMERGES: The CWA yesterday said this year’s fourth storm of the typhoon season had formed in the South China Sea, but was not expected to affect Taiwan Tropical Storm Gaemi has intensified slightly as it heads toward Taiwan, where it is expected to affect the country in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 8am yesterday, the 120km-radius storm was 800km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving at 9kph northwest, the agency said. A sea warning for Gaemi could be issued tonight at the earliest, it said, adding that the storm is projected to be closest to Taiwan on Wednesday or Thursday. Gaemi’s potential effect on Taiwan remains unclear, as that would depend on its direction, radius and intensity, forecasters said. Former Weather Forecast
As COVID-19 cases in Japan have been increasing for 10 consecutive weeks, people should get vaccinated before visiting the nation, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. The centers reported 773 hospitalizations and 124 deaths related to COVID-19 in Taiwan last week. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) on Tuesday said the number of weekly COVID-19 cases reported in Japan has been increasing since mid-May and surpassed 55,000 cases from July 8 to July 14. The average number of COVID-19 patients at Japan’s healthcare facilities that week was also 1.39 times that of the week before and KP.3 is the dominant
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) working group for Taiwan-related policies is likely to be upgraded to a committee-level body, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is increasingly likely to upgrade the CCP’s Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, Taiwanese authorities should prepare by researching Xi and the CCP, the report said. At the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP, which ended on Thursday last week, the party set a target of 2029 for the completion of some tasks, meaning that Xi is likely preparing to
US-CHINA TRADE DISPUTE: Despite Beijing’s offer of preferential treatment, the lure of China has dimmed as Taiwanese and international investors move out Japan and the US have become the favored destinations for Taiwanese graduates as China’s attraction has waned over the years, the Ministry of Labor said. According to the ministry’s latest income and employment advisory published this month, 3,215 Taiwanese university graduates from the class of 2020 went to Japan, surpassing for the first time the 2,881 graduates who went to China. A total of 2,300 graduates from the class of 2021 went to the US, compared with the 2,262 who went to China, the document showed. The trend continued for the class of 2023, of whom 1,460 went to Japan, 1,334 went to