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When the Machinery of the State Is Denigrated to "Serving the Political Party"…

icon2019/01/21
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 When the Machinery of the State Is Denigrated to "Serving the Political Party"…

 

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 17, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

The Control Yuan, in a vote of 7 to 4, adopted an impeament motion against Kuan Chung-ming on charges of taking a second job. The grounds for the impeachment motion by the Control Yuan is that when serving as a minister of state without portfolio and chairman of the National Development Council, Kuan Chung-ming continuously wrote commentaries for a weekly magazine without a byline, drawing NT$50,000 every month, in violation of the provisions relative to taking other jobs of the Public Functionary Service Act. Tsai Chung-yi, proponent of the motion, cited the position of the Ministry of Personnel under the Examination Yuan, believing that as long as it is a regular, long-term job, it conforms to the requirements of “taking other jobs,” thus the evidence of offense is conclusive. The problem is that a weekly is a magazine published every seven days; just because Kuan Chung-ming wrote commentaries for this magazine, the members of the Control Yuan highhandedly impeached him on charges of “taking other jobs.” The move, we are afraid, would be called trumped-up charges.

Initially, the Control Yuan took up the case because it wanted to investigate the situation of public functionaries taking other jobs on the Mainland, and stated that it was not targeting any individuals. However, in the end, it turned its guns against Kuan Chung-ming, and shifted the focus to Kuan’s other jobs in the country; the approach of comprehensively investigating Kuan’s personal data and tax records reached such a point that the move was tantamount to framing charges. In the investigation, government officials who were invited to express their professional opinions on the case were not in tune with one another, but the Control Yuan did not intend to go any deeper. Various government agencies have handed down many explanatory orders regarding the question of government officials taking other jobs; however, the proponent Control Yuan member "selected what he needed," finding other ways to invoke provisions of law.

Furthermore, let's talk about the appropriateness of invoking jurisprudence in this impeachment case. First, the Judicial Yuan decades ago had issued an explanatory letter: "When public functionaries contribute articles to newspapers or magazines, or write books for publication, receiving remuneration," it is not considered taking another job. Now, a group of Control Yuan members, however, took the liberty of determining that Kuan Chung-ming wrote commentaries in violation of the law regarding taking other jobs; is this deliberate abuse of the law, or forgetting to consult the judicial branch? Second, the Ministry of Personnel also took a further step to explain the matter, pointing out that public functionaries could not take concurrent positions of publisher, managing director, manager, or reporter of newspapers and the like, as well as magazines; as to being invited to write columns, it is not prohibited. The Control Yuan, however, deliberately ignored this point. Third, generally public universities consider that professors appearing on political talk shows or writing columns as belonging to the scope of "freedom of speech" and do not impose a ban. The Control Yuan now, however, considered Kuan Chung-ming as “writing without a byline” and impeached him. Does this really mean that politically-appointed officials do not even have anonymous freedom of speech?

The bigger problem in this impeachment motion is: If the charges against Kuan Chung-ming stand, and the Control Yuan uses the same standards to scrutinize all public functionaries, how many would be accountable?

The impeachment motion this time was handled by a Control Yuan session presided over by Chen Shi-meng, who hoisted high the big banner of "reinstate Chen Shui-bian." He utilized technical maneuvering to acquire numerical superiority in adopting the impeachment motion against Kuan Chung-ming, achieving a "great accomplishment." However, the determination on the basis of poor jurisprudence could hardly cover up the mentality of ardent political struggle, leaving an ugly page of the machinery of the state "serving the political party."

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