Nominations come under sustained fire

Pan-blue legislators continued their opposition to President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) nominations for the Control Yuan yesterday as Aboriginal legislators expressed disapproval over the lack of an Aboriginal presence on the list.

Aboriginal Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟) was indignant about the lack of representation of Aboriginals on the list, saying that when Control Yuan member Chen Jinn-lih (陳進利) ends his tenure, there will be no Aboriginal members at all.

Liao yesterday said he would lead Aboriginal legislators in rejecting any list of nominations unless Chen included Aboriginal people.

Meanwhile. Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權), executive director of the KMT's central policy committee, accused Chen of playing games in saying that he wanted input from all political parties on the nominations, but then failing to get in contact with the KMT or the People First Party (PFP) after the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) turned down his approach.

KMT legislative whip Huang Teh-fu (黃德福) said that if Chen wanted to be a president for all the people, he should have had consulted opposition parties prior to releasing the nominations.

He added that the opposition had on different occasions questioned the suitability of Nita Ing (殷琪), chairwoman of the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation, to sit on the recommendation panel for the nominations, but the Chen administration refused to listen.

PFP legislative whip Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄), was equally scathing, saying that not one legislator in the pan blue camp would give the go-ahead to the list, and that there were even some DPP legislators who were opposed to it. Liu said that if Chen wanted the legislature to approve the list, he would have to make some changes first.

Liu said that although some of the names on the list were acceptable, the present nominations would result in a Control Yuan that could not be effective in its work as a watchdog.

He stopped short of rejecting the list outright, saying that this would be unfair to more worthy nominees. He said the PFP would discuss the issue with the KMT later, but in the meantime the PFP would not cooperate with the pan green camp on the issue.

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) is set to convene further cross-party negotiations relating to the Control Yuan nominations, an extension to the current legislative session and the draft of the party assets bill. Wang said yesterday that Chen had not called him to seek his support for the nominations, but he said that making the nominations were the president's right.

The nominations were delivered to the Legislative Yuan on Monday, and Wang convened negotiations the following day. But they broke down owing to pan-blue-camp dissatisfaction with the DPP over amendments to the March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee Statute (三一九槍擊事件真相調查特別委員會條例).

Additional reporting by Debby Wu