Cabinet Secretary-General Lee Ying-yuan (
Lee was referring to Hsieh's proposal to combine three year-end votes for county commissioners and city mayors, county councilors, and village and township mayors into one election in order to save time and money.
"It was my fault that I did not clearly brief my fellow Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) colleagues regarding the `three-in-one' election," Lee said. "However, I assure you that we will keep working on it and I will continue to promote the idea."
Lee's remarks came after a brief political set-to between DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (
In addition to sparking criticism from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Hsieh's plan sparked an immediate statement from Su, who complained about the proposal.
Other DPP members also argued that Hsieh showed disrespect to Su by not consulting him before announcing the plan.
Hsieh and Su are regarded as rising stars in the DPP and potential presidential candidates in 2008. As a result, the spat drew a lot of media attention, even though both emphasized there was no personal animosity between them.
On the same day, Hsieh announced that Lee will be responsible for promoting the idea of the "three-in-one" election and persuading political heavyweights from different political parties to support the plan.
Lee said that his fellow DPP members do support the proposal in principle, but that many of them do not feel that now is the right time to carry it out.
Lee pointed out that no matter what he does, he's likely to be the target of criticism.
"If we communicate with DPP headquarters in advance, will it become an excuse for our political opponents to complain that we only talked to our own people instead of discussing it with them? That could be another problem," he said.
Lee said that the legislature will be his priority and that his efforts are already bearing fruit as relations between the Cabinet and legislature are improving.
"In the past, lawmakers -- especially our political opponents -- were trying hard to veto our proposals for political gain," Lee said. "It will take time to fix such problems."
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