Air disaster forces the DPP to delay its nominations for mayoral races

With only six months left in the run-up to the Taipei and Kaohsiung mayoral elections, DPP headquarters yesterday decided to postpone the nomination of the party's candidates for another month until June 25.

"It's really a bad time to make the nomination because Secretary-General Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) is preoccupied with the relief efforts for the China Airlines crash," DPP Deputy Secretary-General Michael You (游盈隆) said.

"Since the relief efforts may take weeks or even months, it's a better idea to postpone the nomination until June. We'd prefer that he focus on the relief efforts," You told a press conference after the weekly closed-door Central Standing Committee meeting yesterday afternoon.

The committee had originally planned to nominate Lee and incumbent Kaohsiung City Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday to represent the party in the year-end Taipei and Kaohsiung mayoral elections, respectively.

Despite the postponement of the nomination, You said that the party's ad hoc campaign team will continue to map out the campaign strategies for both candidates.

"They could have formed their own campaign teams and kicked off the campaign activities today, but now I'm afraid we have to slow everything down."

Meanwhile, the committee yesterday announced the 231 newly elected members of the National Congress. The members include 65 women and one Aborigine.

The new National Congress is scheduled to hold its first meeting on July 21 to elect new Central Standing Committee and Central Executive Committee members.

After the party approved revisions to its charter on April 20, four seats will be added to the two committees. While the Central Standing Committee will grow from 11 members to 15, the Central Executive Committee will be expanded from 31 members to 35.

Except for the chairman and the four designated members of the Central Standing Committee, the remaining 10 are elected from the 35-member Central Executive Committee.

Thirty of the Central Executive Committee members are elected from the party's National Congress, except for the one seat reserved for the party chairman and four designated by the chairman.

When the party is in power, the chief convener of the party's legislative caucus will assume one of the Central Standing Committee posts, while the remaining three will be appointed by the president.

The same practice will apply to the nominations of the four designated Central Executive Committee members.