Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) yesterday said that civil servants must remain politically neutral during work hours, following allegations that the Kaohsiung City Government banned its employees from joining any recall petitions.
According to leaked meeting minutes obtained by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times), city officials asked every civil servant present if they had received any recall petition documents and instructed them not to take part.
They were also told not to post any inappropriate comments on Facebook during work hours, such as remarks that would breach the government’s principle of political neutrality, the newspaper reported.
Photo: Wang Jung-hsiang, Taipei Times
The document raised concerns over possible government interference, as a petition to recall Han launched in June by Citizens Mowing Action and We Care Kaohsiung is still gathering signatures.
We Care Kaohsiung has called Han — who is to represent the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in next year’s presidential election — a “runaway mayor” ready to abandon Kaohsiung to become president.
The city government said that Han respects residents’ right to recall politicians, but as the mayor has previously said, such petitions must adhere to the law.
The meeting was held to remind staff to remain politically neutral at work after receiving a report that certain staffers were distributing recall petitions and making political comments online during work hours, it said.
The Public Servants’ Administrative Neutrality Act (公務人員行政中立法) stipulates that civil servants may not participate in political activities while at work, it said.
In addition, the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) bans civil servants from initiating a recall petition, it added.
“I have repeatedly told city employees to remain politically neutral at work, but in their free time they can take any political stance — that is without a doubt,” Han said when asked about the leaked minutes.
Although the act bans civil servants from initiating a recall petition, it allows them to sign one, We Care Kaohsiung said.
“Han’s team is asking its employees not to sign any recall petition” apparently in an attempt to police their thought, it said, adding that the petition is not the first recall campaign targeting Han, as he has been “fooling around” in politics for more than two decades.
In 1994, nearly 378,000 residents of then-Taipei County voted to recall Han, who was representing the county as a legislator, it said.
Knowing that residents would not be able to reach the unreasonably high recall threshold at the time, Han did not even offer a defense against the recall in the election notice, it said.
If a campaign to recall Han could garner nearly 400,000 votes back then, getting 500,000 votes this time is possible, it said, adding that Han is now much more well-known and disliked.
Additional reporting by Wang Jung-hsiang
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
RSS