Chen pushed to alter system for naming advisors

In two months, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is due to name a new slate of senior presidential advisors and national policy advisors or to extend the one-year tenure of incumbents.

The appointments, carried out unnoticed in the past, are bound to draw close scrutiny this time, as some are urging Chen to drop senior presidential advisor Shi Wen-long (許文龍) and Tokyo-based national policy advisor Alice King (金美齡), while others are pressing for their retention.

It seems odd that the issue should become a political battlefield, in light of the petty influence the occupants of the positions can exert over the nation's politics.

Created by the late former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in 1948, both offices have traditionally been filled by senior retired officials to keep their prestige aglow -- if only nominally.

Prominent among them are former vice president Hsieh Tung-ming (謝東閔), former premiers Sun Yun-suan (孫運璿) and Tang Fei (唐飛), and former DPP chairmen Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) and Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文).

Leading industrialists such as Nita Ing (殷琪) of the Taiwan High-Speed Railway Co (台灣高鐵), Jeffrey Koo (辜濂松) of the Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中信銀), Stan Shih (施振榮) of Acer Inc (宏電) and Wang Yu-tseng (王又曾) of the Rebar Group (力霸集團) are also grace the list of those tapped for the privilege.

"The roster grew so long at one point that the legislature passed a measure in 1996 that restricts the number of senior presidential advisors and national policy advisors to 30 and 90 respectively," said KMT lawmaker Liu Kuang-hua (劉光華), a scholar in public administration.

To do away with what he tagged as part of the spoils system, the three-term legislator is proposing a drastic cut on both institutions.

"A quarter of the current size should suffice," he argues.

Although seldom consulted, those advisors enjoy a generous salary.

A senior presidential advisor is paid NT$201,960 per month, equivalent to a vice premier, and a national policy advisor is paid NT$179,520, equivalent to a Cabinet minister, according to the Presidential Office.

To save the state coffers unnecessary expenditure, the 1996 amendment also stipulates that only 45 of those advisors may draw a paycheck, with the rest serving unpaid.

King and Shi, active donors to the ruling DPP, belong to the latter group.

Shi enraged pro-China lawmakers for telling a Japanese cartoonist that some Taiwanese comfort women volunteered to serve as prostitutes for the Japanese army during World War II.

King, an overseas independence advocate, openly proclaimed that the ROC was "extinct" during her two trips to Taipei earlier this month.

"Only a handful of advisors keep an office inside the Presidential Office," a personnel official said, adding that the situation was the same when the KMT was in power.

Hsu, the DPP chair who later quit the party to contend the 2000 presidency as an independent, has only met with Chen two or three times in the last 10 months, Hsu's aide said.

There are no regular meetings between the president and the advisors, who are not allowed to partake in policy making in the first place, an aide to senior presidential advisor Ying Chung-wen (殷宗文) said.

In early 1999 after his failed bid to win reelection as Taipei mayor, Chen himself turned down former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) invitation to act as a paid national policy advisor.