The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday amended its charter to exempt certain high-ranking government officials from serving in party positions, while amending the party’s Regulations on Clean Politics to penalize party members who fail to avoid conflicts of interest.
“The public might not know why we are holding an irregula national congress to revise our party charter,” president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said.
“According to the DPP’s original charter, certain government officials are also required to serve as the party’s Central Standing Committee [CSC] members,” she said. “Such a rule was meaningful in the past, but we must reform it under the current situation.”
Photo: CNA
Tsai said that the DPP would look for talented people across party lines who share similar ideologies with the DPP to serve in the new government.
For instance, vice president-elect Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) and premier-designate Lin Chuan (林全) are not DPP members, Tsai said.
The revisions also show the DPP’s determination to promote neutrality of government officials, Tsai said.
Photo: CNA
“Exempting officials from having to also serve as the party’s CSC members would turn the relationship between officials and the DPP into a partnership, instead of a supervisor-to-subordinate relationship,” Tsai said. “They report to the people of Taiwan, not to the CSC, and that is why today’s [yesterday’s] party charter revisions are important.”
The original charter stipulates that party members serving as vice president, Presidential Office secretary-general and deputy secretary-general, Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers, as well as several other central government positions, must be party delegates, while DPP members serving as vice-president, premier and Presidential Office secretary-general are mandatorily CSC members under a DPP administration.
The article giving the president the option of doubling as the DPP chairperson remained unchanged.
The party charter was also amended to allow local government heads affiliated with the DPP, as well as legislative caucus officials, to serve as CSC or Central Executive Committee members, since they are elected by popular vote and represent their constituencies.
Meanwhile, the congress also amended the Regulations on Clean Politics to authorize the party’s Clean Politics Committee to penalize party members who fail to avoid conflicts of interest.
As the regulation was amended after the controversial purchase and sales of OBI Pharma Co (台灣浩鼎) shares owned by Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey’s (翁啟惠) daughter, the clause has been called “the Wong Chi-huey clause.”
However, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) denied that the amendment had anything to do with Wong, as he is not a DPP member.
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