Top cabinet members to be unveiled

Premier-designate Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) will announce more major Cabinet members today, including the ministers of education and finance as well as the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) chairperson.

Liu announced 17 of the 36 members in his Cabinet last Monday, many of whom are familiar faces from the last Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration. More key members will be announced this morning.

Among the remaining Cabinet personnel, the nominee for minister of education has drawn much attention recently, especially after prospective candidates for the post — former minister of education Kirby Yang (楊朝祥) and Taipei City’s Education Department Director Wu Ching-chi (吳清基) — announced they would not join president-elect Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration.

Although Yang had said he would not join the new administration, several groups yesterday lauded Yang’s rich experience in handling educational affairs and urged Ma to appoint him minister of education.

“Minister Yang has great knowledge about educational affairs and would be able to hit the ground running,” Kuo Rong-hsian (郭榮祥), director of Tainan City Teacher’s Association, said yesterday during a forum in Kaohsiung.

The event was the second of three forums on education organized by Ma’s office in a bid to gather advice from education groups for his education platform. Ma and Yang both attended the forum.

Vice president of National Kaohsiung Normal University Tsai Pei-tsun (蔡培村) also urged Ma to choose a minister who would execute education policies without allowing his own ideology to interfere with his job.

Ma remained tight-lipped on other candidates for the position, including former National Taiwan University president Chen Wei-chao (陳維昭), only saying that Liu would make the announcement today.

Ma also declined to comment on former Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislator Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛), who is believed to be a prospective candidate for the position of MAC chairperson.

One long-term Ma aide, KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), expressed concern regarding Lai’s alleged appointment, saying that Lai and the TSU’s pro-independence stance could create conflict within the Ma administration, which seeks closer ties with China.

Ma has promised to include individuals from the pan-green camp in his administration.

Lai served as a national security adviser to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and was part of the team of negotiators when Taiwan applied for WTO membership in 2001.

She was also a member of Taipei City’s International Affairs Commission when Ma was mayor.

Meanwhile, Ma said yesterday the Ministry of Education would reserve 1 percent of college enrolments to foreign students to make it easier for students from abroad to pursue higher education in Taiwan.

“By reserving 1 percent of our college enrolments, presently at about 1.3 million, Taiwan will have a better chance of attracting academic talent from abroad,” Ma said during a colloquium with a group of educators from southern Taiwan held in Kaohsiung.

Ma and vice president-elect Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) traveled to Kaohsiung yesterday to meet education representatives from southern Taiwan to obtain their view on education policy to allow the incoming administration to craft better and more pragmatic education policies.

After consulting the representatives, Ma said most of them lamented the low budget for education and asked that his administration increase the education budget by 0.2 percent of GDP annually. The education budget would be about NT$24 billion (US$792.08 million) every year or about NT$200 billion over eight years.