Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) yesterday urged the Legislative Yuan to amend a law governing its approval of political appointees and conduct a thorough review of Lee Chin-yung (李進勇), the nominee for Central Election Commission (CEC) chairman.
The former Yunlin County commissioner was nominated to be the new commission chairman by Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) in February. As part of the confirmation process, the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee yesterday held its first meeting to review Lee’s qualifications.
If confirmed, Lee would serve as commission chairman until Nov. 3, 2021, and be responsible for thousands of votes held nationwide, CCW chief executive officer Leo Chang (張宏林) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Lin Kuo-hsien, Taipei Times
“For a role this important, the Executive Yuan has only provided an eight-page document on his qualifications,” he said.
“We are very unhappy with the amount of information the ruling party has provided for his review,” Chang added.
The eight-page document only covers Lee’s education, experience, future goals and opinions on major policy areas, said Allen Tian (田君陽), the director of CCW’s policy department.
Lee’s stated opinions on the commission’s major policy areas were “taking an unbiased approach to the commission’s affairs and actively researching ways to make improvements, while being open to suggestions,” he said.
“Someone who is going to chair the commission for years should display a more proactive attitude, rather than expecting legislators to confirm him based on his vague claims,” Tian said.
In a legislative document that the Democratic Progressive Party caucus issued in April 2016, the party criticized the current law on the confirmation process as “insufficient” and described the resulting process as “sloppy,” he said.
It submitted draft amendments to the Act Governing the Exercise of Legislative Power (立法院職權行使法), which would require the government agency nominating a political appointee to provide information about the nominee’s financial, tax and criminal records, Tian said.
In addition, the amendments would require the Legislative Yuan to spend at least a month reviewing the nominee and hold public hearings during the process, he said.
“The best thing would be seeing the Legislative Yuan immediately improve the confirmation process by passing the amendments,” he said.
While the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) attempted to block the meeting to review Lee earlier yesterday, Chang said such actions are not necessarily helpful.
“The opposition parties should properly examine the nominee’s qualifications when they have the opportunity, instead of constantly blocking review meetings, because that prevents people from finding out whether he would be a good fit for the position,” he said.
He urged political parties to remain political neutral on the matter, saying: “If the commission cannot operate fairly, democracy will be seriously undermined.”
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