President-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said she would respect the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus’ choice of legislative speaker for the incoming ninth legislature following the Jan. 16 elections.
Tsai made the remarks at a DPP caucus meeting in Taipei, which is to set new rules for the caucus and the procedures to appoint a speaker.
“The public is concerned with the Feb. 1 appointment of the new legislative speaker, and my approach is to honor the decision that the caucus will make as a body,” she said.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
The DPP made history by effecting the first party alternation in the legislature and must meet the expectations of the people by making the legislature a body that is “of the people,” focusing on professionalism and transparency, Tsai said.
“The elections are over and reform starts now,” she said, urging all parties to “abandon prejudices” and “unite in solidarity.”
Tsai said that the DPP would cooperate with other parties on administrative appointments and legislation to “build consensus” and “maximize energy for reform.”
Regarding the appointment of Premier Simon Chang (張善政) on Monday by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Tsai said that the constitutional authority of the Presidential Office would be respected, and the DPP would help ensure political stability and the continued functioning of the government.
“Whether it is called an interim or caretaker Cabinet, the administration must perform its assigned function, just as legislators are to carefully supervise and respect the government, especially giving due respect to civil servants who shoulder the burden of maintaining the continuity in governance,” she said.
Tsai added that she sensed a marked change in the mood of the DPP caucus from its previous meeting before the elections, in which every legislator reported that their seat was at risk, as well as her first address in 2008 to the caucus as DPP chairperson, when the party did not have enough legislators to fill the front row.
Unnamed sources in the DPP said that by tradition, leadership positions within the caucus go to vote only after negotiations by contenders had concluded, and it is likely that the positions for legislative speaker and deputy speaker would be filled in the same way.
Three legislators-elect are believed to be running for speaker: Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) and Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全).
Last week, Tsai spoke against aggressive campaigning for the speaker’s position, which she said might be detrimental to the party’s image, and Ker, Chen and Su’s respective camps toned down their rhetoric.
Reports on Monday said that Tsai’s caucus speech, which required last-minute changes to her schedule, was meant to foil a straw poll covertly planned by an unnamed legislative speaker hopeful, a report DPP Legislator Tsai Chih-chang (蔡其昌) denied.
In other news, in an interview on Monday with the radio channel Super FM98.5, Ker promised to open legislative sessions to citizen reporters, saying that a lack of transparency had been caused by the “too conservative” approach of KMT Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), and that he considers the most important task of the next legislative speaker is “repairing the Legislative Yuan’s reputation.”
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