The KMT's 210-seat Central Committee yesterday approved the party's slate of nominees for legislator-at-large amid complaints from committee members about their being treated as a "rubber stamp."
Each of the 41 recommended nominees passed ballots by Central Committee members without any surprising twists.
Topping the list of nominees are Legislative Yuan vice speaker Yao Eng-chi (
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
A recommended nominee can only be screened out if over half of the Central Committee members vote against him. The order of the nominees will not be rearranged according to the number of approval votes they obtain.
This is the first time the KMT has let the Central Committee vote to decide the legislator-at-large nominees, which is part of the party's plan for internal democratic reform.
However, many outspoken lawmakers in attendance at the Central Committee meeting expressed strong opposition to the ballot rules which they say are undemocratic and give them little room to make changes to the list.
"We Central Committee members are here to serve simply as a rubber stamp," said legislator Chen Ching-pao (陳清寶).
Legislator Apollo Chen (
"Most people on the list are strangers to us, though none of them are our enemies. We don't know how are we going to exercise our right of veto," Chen said.
The 41 nominees were selected by the KMT's nomination review panels from a total of 130 contestants vying for the party's nomination. Only those who rank within the top 16 to 19 are considered likely to win seats, based on a forecast of the KMT's showing in the year-end legislative elections.
A total of 41 legislator-at-large seats are available, and they will be allocated to political parties according to their share of the vote in the constituency-based elections.
In addition to criticism of the ballot rules, reformists within the KMT expressed their disappointment that the party's nominees for legislator-at-large seats weren't innovative enough to renew its image.
"For the KMT, reform has yet to succeed," said Chen Feng-hsing (陳鳳馨), a Central Committee member and former KMT spokeswoman.
Chen said the party should have nominated more high-profile candidates to fill the legislator-at-large seats and win popular support for the KMT's legislative campaign.
Also, as Taiwan is facing its worst recession in decades, the KMT should have nominated as many economic professionals as possible, Chen said.
In response to these doubts, KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
"Today's event marks a very important milestone in the KMT's democratic development. In this process, we will learn how to make democratization more progressive," Lien said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS