Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman-elect Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday reached an agreement with outgoing KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) to postpone the party’s Central Committee and Central Standing Committee (CSC) elections until after its national congress on Aug. 20, when Wu is to become chairman.
CSC member Yao Chiang-lin (姚江臨), who is responsible for negotiations on the leadership handover, said the two sides reached the conclusion at a meeting yesterday.
The elections were scheduled for July 8 and July 29, but 26 CSC members proposed to have them in September, after Wu takes office.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The KMT has booked Chungshan Hall in Yangmingshan in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) as the venue for the congress.
The Chinese-language United Daily News quoted Yao as saying that Wu had agreed to share with Hung nomination rights for Central Committee members.
Wu and Hung are to jointly propose a list of Central Committee nominees next week, Yao said.
The two had been at loggerheads over the nomination rights for weeks.
Yao said that 163 of the 210 Central Committee members had announced re-election bids.
According to standard practice for the party, those 163 members would be nominated automatically.
Citing an estimate by her aides, Hung on Wednesday said that among the remaining 47 seats, about 38 would be secured by nonpartisan members.
That would leave nine nominations for Hung and Wu to make.
Wu on Wednesday said CSC members who sought to postpone the elections should consult the KMT agencies in charge of polls, but the date had not been determined.
Hung’s camp said yesterday’s meeting meeting did not touch on the date of the national congress or when the elections would be held.
The issues require further negotiations, KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Hu Wen-chi (胡文琦) said.
The two sides agreed that Central Committee members and candidates for KMT party representative seats reserved for party members running businesses in China are to be jointly nominated by Hung and Wu, Hu said.
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
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