Taiwan News
Date: 2016-03-15
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The New Power Party failed in its plan to elect a new executive chairman Tuesday after not enough members of its leadership turned up.
The relatively young party, which won five seats in January’s legislative election, has a structure topped by a seven-member board of chairpersons, who were scheduled to vote for an executive chairman on Tuesday.

However, since three of the members were unable to attend the event, the party decided to cancel a news conference and to postpone the election until Friday.

The seven board members, elected Monday in a vote by 44 percent of the party’s more than 2,000 members, were incumbent executive chairman and lawmaker Huang Kuo-chang, legislators Freddy Lim and Kawlo Iyun Pacidal, writer Neil Peng, movie director Ko I-chen, legal reform activist Lin Feng-cheng and writer Lin Shih-yu. Ko and the two members surnamed Lin were the ones who were absent, a party official said.

Huang, who was reportedly the favorite to be re-elected, apologized to the media for the unexpected postponement, while Peng said that lawmakers should not combine their position with that of party leader. There should be a separation between party matters and public office, he said.     [FULL  STORY]