A civil legislative watchdog yesterday relaxed its the results of its evaluation of the seventh legislature’s performance in the spring legislative session, which concluded last Friday.
The Congress Watch Foundation listed both Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers on its list of the worst 10 lawmakers.
The legislators it considered to have the worst performance were KMT legislators Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), Lee Ching-hua (李慶華), Lin Yi-shih (林益世), Chen Hsiu-ching (陳秀卿) and Liu Chuan-chung (劉銓忠), DPP lawmakers Yu Tien (余天), Chen Chi-yu (陳啟昱), Chen Ying (陳瑩) and Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮), and Non-Partisan Solidarity Union (NPSU) Legislator Lin Pin-kuan (林炳坤).
The foundation based its rating on the lawmakers’ attendance record, the number of times they registered at legislative committees to make public statements on legislative agenda and the number of proposals they initiated.
Foundation board member Yao Li-ming (姚立明), formerly the deputy director of the anti-Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) campaign, told a press conference that the foundation was willing to put the list up for public scrutiny.
Liu Yi-jun (劉義鈞), another participating board member, said that the 10 legislators topped the worst-performance list because they had the poorest performance in the three aforementioned categories.
The foundation also listed 10 legislators whom they viewed as having the best performance, with DPP Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) being the only DPP member on the list.
Liu, a professor of public affairs at Fo Guang University, said that the results were finalized after a discussion between the foundation’s 17 board members, who are academics in a number of fields.
“We were party blind [when undertaking the evaluation],” Liu said in English.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
Actor Lee Wei (李威) was released on bail on Monday after being named as a suspect in the death of a woman whose body was found in the meeting place of a Buddhist group in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) last year, prosecutors said. Lee, 44, was released on NT$300,000 (US$9,148) bail, while his wife, surnamed Chien (簡), was released on NT$150,000 bail after both were summoned to give statements regarding the woman’s death. The home of Lee, who has retreated from the entertainment business in the past few years, was also searched by prosecutors and police earlier on Monday. Lee was questioned three
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —