Chang visited Wang Jin-pyng, president of the Legislative Yuan, from the opposition party Kuomintang early in the morning to enlist support for his yet-to-be-formed cabinet.

A Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker at large, Chang is scheduled to meet with the legislative caucus leaders of all the political parties except his own in the next couple of days.

One of them, Fu Kung-chi of the People First Party, made clear he has already started talking the Kuomintang into joining hands to topple Chang’s new cabinet as soon as it is formed.

His Kuomintang counterpart Tseng Yung-chuan stressed the two opposition parties have a “very good cooperation mechanism.”

“We are considering joining hands with the PFP,” he said, “but we need a little more time to make a decision.”

The Taiwan Solidarity Union, the DPP’s tiny ally, will give Chang no headache, but the Nonpartisan Solidarity Union almost always votes with the opposition.

As Chang knows full well, support will be hard to come by in the legislature. The bone of contention is the reorganization of the Central Election Commission.

Founded in 1982 under the Executive Yuan, the commission has to be reorganized by June 26. A new organic law of the commission, charged with holding and supervising elections, has been stalled in the Legislative Yuan because of opposition from the ruling party.

The DPP wants to continue to control the commission, while the opposition demands that it be organized by all the parties according to proportional representation.

Parliament leader Wang, who is from the opposition KMT, said it’s the ruling party that is boycotting the bill proposed by the opposition.

Wang was prevented twice from presiding over a plenary session of the legislature to act on the bill after lawmakers of the ruling party started melees on the floor. At least one Kuomintang lawmaker was taken away from the legislature to be hospitalized for injuries.

“It won’t do any good,” Wang said, “if I were stopped (by the DPP legislators) again.”

Chang made no comment but urged Wang to help adopt the 2007 national budget bill as soon as possible. The opposition does not want to act on the budget bill unless the ruling party agrees to legislate the election commission reorganization bill.

The Kuomintang and the PFP have indicated they would pass the budget bill, which should have been adopted by the end of last year, as well as the arms purchase appropriations, if the ruling party agreed to reorganize the Central Election Commission.

The opposition alliance has a majority of two in the 219-seat Legislative Yuan.

The premier-designate Chang didn’t give any indication whether a compromise can be reached to break the stalemate.

“I’ll make my stand clear after I assume office,” Chang said.

He also refused to reveal who he has in mind to serve in his new cabinet.

“When I make a decision,” Chang told reporters, “I’ll let you know.”

Speculation is rife that most of his predecessor Su Tseng-chang’s cabinet will be replaced. The Su cabinet will resign en masse today.

The Legislative Yuan is scheduled to act on the reorganization and budget bills next Friday. The other important bill, the arms purchase bill from the United States, was not put on Friday’s agenda at a steering committee meeting yesterday.

Though on the agenda, the reorganization and budget bills may not be put to a vote again.

The chances are that they both won’t be acted on until after Chang takes office. But he is bracing for torture when he appears on the floor of the nation’s highest legislative organ to make a mandatory administrative report as the new premier.

Both the Kuomintang and the PFP are ready to grill Chang on his decision to suspend work on Taiwan’s fourth nuclear power plant back in October 2000 when he was premier.

Lien Chan, then chairman of the Kuomintang, had met President Chen Shui-bian shortly before Chang made the announcement of the suspension.

Chen gave Lien assurances that the work would continue, but Chang announced he would suspend the project, touching off a political crisis as the opposition demanded that the president be impeached.

In the end, President Chen had to have the work resumed, but Taiwan had to pay a heavy penalty to the contractors of the project for the delay in work.

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