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Cabinet urges the public, DPP to stop their sniping

Cabinet Spokesman Chou Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday urged the public to stop unnecessary criticism of the Cabinet's plan to combine three elections in one at the end of this year.

"The Cabinet will be responsible for the proposals, policies or decisions it announces. In the meantime, we accept all kinds of advice. But irrelevant criticism is not helpful at all," Chou said.

The Cabinet announced on Wednesday that it will combine three elections -- the county commissioners' and city mayors' election, county councilors' election and village and township mayors' election -- into one poll at the end of this year, in order to save money and time.

However, the announcement was immediately criticized by both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The DPP immediately announced that it does not support Hsieh's idea of combining the elections.

In addition to complaining that the combination of the three elections may create more vote-buying problems -- which was also the KMT's complaint -- criticism mounted within the DPP that Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) had not discussed the matter with Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) in advance.

Some DPP members argued that Hsieh showed disrespect to Su by not consulting him before making the announcement. But Chou immediately fired back at such criticism.

"We cannot and should not continue criticism like this. There is no `conspiracy' involved in this," Chou said. "If such criticism comes from the public, it's a sign that people do not understand our policy. If such criticism comes from our fellow DPP members, it's a sign that we do not have enough faith in ourselves."

Chou disagreed with the notion that the combined election will create more vote-buying problems.
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