With a Cabinet reshuffle rumored to be imminent, sources in the Government Information Office (GIO) said yesterday that GIO Minister Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) was preparing to tender his resignation.
Approached by reporters yesterday, Su would neither confirm nor deny that he would leave the position he took up in January, saying that “it was a hypothetical question.”
“Currently the most important thing is to do my job at the GIO well,” Su said.
Earlier this month, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said there would be a minor Cabinet reshuffle sometime around Dec. 20 (tomorrow), with some second-term local government heads being invited to join the Cabinet as their tenure expires on the same day.
Wu yesterday repeated that a “very small-scale Cabinet reshuffle” would take place in the next few days. It was widely rumored that outgoing Hsinchu Mayor Lin Jung-tzer (林政則) would be named a minister without portfolio.
A report in the Chinese-language China Times Weekly yesterday said that newly appointed Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) has started to form a campaign team in preparation for President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election bid in 2012.
It said that Su would become KMT spokesman, a position he held when Ma was running for president last year, and KMT Legislator Cheng Li-wen (鄭麗文) may succeed Su.
Asked to comment on the report, Wu said he was not aware of any such assignment.
“[King] just took up the position of KMT secretary-general a few days ago ... and I haven’t talked about transferring Cabinet members [to the party]. We will discuss this when he brings up the issue,” Wu said.
Cheng yesterday denied the report, saying, “there was no such thing. It is a rumor.”
Saying that she had not been asked to become GIO minister, Cheng added that it was impolite for her to talk about the subject at this moment as “Su is still in the position and he does not perform poorly.”
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday remained silent when asked to comment on the rumored reshuffle, while Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) also denied tendering his resignation.
KMT Spokesman Lee Chien-jung (李建榮), who also serves as the director of the KMT’s Culture and Communications Committee, said he did not have any knowledge about a personnel reshuffle.
It is expected that the KMT will also have a small-scale reshuffle after the meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), in Taichung next week.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
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