Despite being detained for suspected involvement in the Kaohsiung vote-buying scandal, the speaker of the Kaohsiung City Council can assert his authority by appointing a representative to host a coming council meeting if prosecutors agree.
The Kaohsiung City Council is scheduled to hold its first meeting on March 31. Who will chair the meeting, however, remains to be decided, as Speaker Chu An-hsiung (朱安雄) and Vice Speaker Tsai Sung-hsiung (蔡松雄) have both been detained by the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office.
To ensure the meeting takes place, the council is pressuring Chu to name his proxy.
The council's regulations stipulate that Chu is entitled to choose a proxy to host the council's meetings.
But whether Chu's attorney will be entitled to deliver a list of councilors to Chu to enable him to do so is a matter for prosecutors to decide.
The Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office has yet to decide on the issue.
If they decide against it, the council will have to make use of another option -- to ask the 41 councilors to elect a temporary representative to ensure the smooth operation of council proceedings.
The director of the Ministry of the Interior's Civil Affairs Department, Lin Mei-chu (林美珠), said that the incumbent councilors are entitled to elect, during the next 15 days, a temporary speaker to host the coming meeting, and the most senior councilor of the council would automatically be the temporary speaker if councilors fail to elect another one.
Thirty-three of the council's 44 councilors are expected to be charged with vote-buying by prosecutors.
Those not expected to face charges include two KMT councilors, four DPP councilors, two TSU councilors, and one PFP councilor.
Most of the six pan-blue councilors, however, were just elected and lack the experience to head the council.
Lin said that the speakership election would be held again as soon as a final verdict is reached in Chu's case.
Chu was found guilty last month and sentenced to 22 months in prison, but has appealed his conviction.
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