KMT elects new Central Standing Committee

The 32 CSC members, who will serve for a one-year term, were chosen from 40 candidates.

Huang Chao-shun, a female legislator from southern Kaohsiung City, who led the pact by garnering the highest number of 1,191 ballots.

She repeated the same feat last year when she also won the most votes.

Huang was followed by legislators Yao Jiang-lin, who is also a labor union leader; John Chiang, son of the late President Chiang Ching-kuo and a former foreign minister; Tseng Yung-chuan, concurrently vice president of the Legislative Yuan.

Other top vote winners included Hsieh Kun-hung, a young representative of the farming and fishing community; Lien Shen-wen, son of KMT Honorary Chairman Lien Chan; Legislator Lin Chang-ming; Hsu Hsien-jung, a business executive of the Prince Group; Lai Diao-tsan, a party member; and Legislator Ho Tsai-fung.

There are 10 females on the committee. The aboriginal community and the underprivileged people are each represented by one member.

The CSC used to wield power over adopting major national policies and appointments of senior officials to public offices.

Senior Cabinet officials used to take around one-third of the CSC seats.

But none of the incumbent Cabinet members are represented in the new panel this year after President Ma Ying-jeou adopted a new policy of delicately divide the party and the government as part of his alleged aim to make the government serve all people regardless their party lines.

However, the new approach has more or less invited antagonism from the party establishment and lawmakers that are displeased by Ma’s policy of keeping an arms-length distance from his own party.

This was seen as a factor for some KMT lawmakers blasting the administration’s policies like members from the opposition party.

To mend the fence, Ma and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan now dispatch representatives to regularly attend CSC meetings for closer coordination as well as to reduce the resistance from their own comrades.

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