Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday said that he had asked to meet with Chinese Nationalist Party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) last week after the party amended its regulations to remove term limits on legislator-at-large seats, but that his request was spurned.
Wang told reporters that he hoped to meet with Chu after the Central Standing Committee meeting on Wednesday, where the party regulations were amended with the apparent sole purpose — though the party insisted it was not aimed at benefiting any particular individual, but a systematic revision — of opening the door for Wang to retain his legislator-at-large seat in the next legislature.
“I was planning to thank and discuss overall plans on stumping [for the party’s candidates] with the chairman and committee members after the meeting, but it was not arranged,” Wang said.
Photo: CNA
Asked about his absence from several KMT candidates’ rallies — which reportedly has the KMT’s top brass questioning his loyalty — Wang said he had been campaigning for the party “everywhere and all the time.”
Media reports have said that Wang and Chu met on Oct. 12, and Chu allegedly encouraged Wang to run for president, but that KMT headquarters decided an hour later to nominate Chu at the Oct. 17 special party congress.
Asked about the reports, Wang said it was not appropriate for him to talk about the matter.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Sources close to Wang have said that Chu did not tell the speaker of his intention to run for president when they met on Oct. 12 and that he even encouraged Wang to throw his hat in the ring.
They said that Wang demurred, saying it could be “either [Chu] or Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), but my nomination would require the party’s consensus,” hinting that “deep blue” KMT members would oppose his candidacy.
An hour after the meeting, KMT headquarters told select media outlets that the party would hold a special party congress to replace Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) with Chu as presidential candidate, the source said.
One of Wang’s advisers said that Chu had only been paying lip service when he emphasized that Wang had his and the party’s respect.
“We had no idea about his legislative reform plan until we read about it in the newspaper the next day,” the adviser said.
“There had been no attempt to discuss it with Wang beforehand,” the adviser added.
Wang’s aides are also unhappy with the remarks made by Tai Po-te (戴伯特), director of the KMT’s Huang Fu-hsing (黃復興) military veterans’ branch, at last week’s Central Standing Committee meeting when he proposed that Wang be listed as the 10th candidate on the party’s legislator-at-large roster.
Wang’s camp believes that it was a move authorized by party headquarters, saying that Tai is not a committee member and should not have been able to weigh in on the discussion about the list.
“Fool me once, I am a fool; fool me twice, I am a fool and you a liar. And Wang was being fooled more than twice,” a friend of Wang’s said.
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