President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said she will call a policy coordination meeting every week starting tomorrow in the hope of making her administration’s policymaking more efficient and comprehensive.
Through the mechanism, her administration will set the direction and tempo of important policies, and discuss how to divide up the work, said Tsai, who serves concurrently as chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Besides Tsai, the meetings will be attended by Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), Premier Lin Chuan (林全) and Vice Premier Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀), Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said.
Other participants are to include DPP caucus convener Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), DPP caucus secretary-general Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡), DPP Secretary-General Hung Yao-fu (洪耀福), the DPP’s New Frontier Foundation think tank chief executive officer Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) and representatives of local governments controlled by the DPP.
Huang said the meeting will serve the purpose of holding regular discussions of major policies between the Presidential Office, the Cabinet and the DPP, in a bid to improve the policymaking process and improve its quality, speed and efficiency.
The implementation of a five-day workweek is expected to be one of the main topics at tomorrow’s meeting.
Tsai’s announcement comes amid various opinions polls showing that her approval rating has fallen below 50 percent.
A survey released on Monday last week by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation found that 44.7 percent of Taiwanese approved of Tsai’s handling of major national issues, compared with 52.3 percent in August and 69.9 percent when she first took office.
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