PDF(2.7mb) - 國家政策研究基金會

Exercise of the Powers of Examination and Control 121
Chang Po-ya, who had no party affiliation, as president
and vice president of the Examination Yuan. Also nominated
were 19 Members of the Examination Yuan.
Their nomination had to be confirmed by the Legislative
Yuan, where the opposition alliance of the Kuomintang
and People First Party controlled 113 of the
225 seats. Without agreement with the opposition, Yao
was unlikely to be confirmed. The Kuomintang tended
to support Chang as vice president of the Examination
Yuan, in place of whom the People First Party preferred
to have one of its members nominated by President
Chen confirmed. Only 116 legislators were present and
voting to confirm the nominees. Yao’s nomination was
confirmed by a vote of 113 for and one against. Chang
was rejected by a vote of 102 for and five against with
nine others invalidated. The nomination of all 19
members of the Examination Yuan was confirmed.
Twelve of them were supported by the opposition. They
included Iban Nokan ( 伊 凡 諾 幹 ), Wu Tai-cheng ( 吳 泰
成 ), Wu Chia-li ( 吳 嘉 麗 ), Lee Grace Whei-may ( 李 惠
梅 ), Chiu Tsong-juh ( 邱 聰 智 ), Hung Teh-hsuan ( 洪 德
旋 ), Hsu Cheng-kuang ( 徐 正 光 ), Hsu Ching-fu ( 許 慶
復 ), Liu Wu-tse ( 劉 武 哲 ), Liu Hsin-su ( 劉 興 善 ), Tsai
Bih-hwang ( 蔡 壁 煌 ) and Bian Yu-yuan ( 邊 裕 淵 ).
The governing party supported the other seven: Wu
Mao-hsiung ( 吳 茂 雄 ), Lee Ching-hsiung ( 李 慶 雄 ), Lin
Yu-tee ( 林 玉 體 ), Chang Cheng-shuh ( 張 正 修 ), Kuo
Guang-hsiung ( 郭 光 雄 ), Chen Mao-hsiung ( 陳 茂 雄 )
and Tsai Shih-yuan ( 蔡 式 淵 ).
Both Chen and Yao were inclined to abolish the
Examination Yuan. Nevertheless, they made it the
spoils of office, divided among political parties after
horse-trading.
With Yao as its president, the Examination Yuan
could not function independently. The governing party
was able to intervene. The power of examination was
not exercised normally for six years.
Political interference hindered the exercise of the
examination power in two ways. Amoy or Min, a dialect
spoken in southern Fujian and Taiwan, was introduced
in setting examination papers. For example, in
the civil service examination of 2003, some of the
questions asked in the test of Chinese were written in
Amoy, which was not quite intelligible to candidates
who speak Mandarin, the national language. Yao, a
Taiwan independence activist, did not recognize Mandarin
as the national language. Neither did Lin Yu-tee
of DPP and Chang Cheng-shuh, who formulated the
questions. The questions were resented by non-Amoyspeaking
candidates, particularly those who speak
Hakka as their mother tongue. On September 25, 2003,
the Examination Yuan members met in council to pass a
resolution on the principles to be followed in formulating
questions in the test of Chinese. They included:
a. Questions have to be formulated to ensure open
competition and in accordance with all related regulations
to meet the personnel demand of government
agencies; and
b. No political ideology should be tested, while questions
should be made not ethnically or genderly discriminatory,
without reference to difficult as well as
irrelevant old Chinese, and with no words yet to be
established by usage applied.
The other way of interference is by testing whether
candidates were political correct. Though the resolution
precludes any test on political ideology, candidates for
the bar examination of 2005 had to answer questions
that measured their political correctness. Those questions
were asked in the test of Chinese, again. The test
included two parts: reading comprehension and composition.
The candidates were asked to read President
Chen Shui-bian’s speech delivered at the fourth anniversary
of the founding of the Taiwan Solidarity Union,
a pro-independence ally of the governing party. There
would not have been any controversy, if the speech had
focused on his vision of the nation’s future. Instead it
was a severe criticism of Lien Chan and James Soong,
the chairpersons of the Kuomintang and People First
Party, respectively. The two opposition leaders were
accused of colluding with the Chinese Communists to
denigrating Taiwan. The subject for the composition
was “Characteristics of Lawyers and National Leader-