Kaohsiung City Acting Mayor Yang Ming-chou announced nine new city appointees on the 14th and was criticized for having bias.
You can see the fingerprints of Chen Chu's faction all over the place. Are we looking at an administrative team here, or an election team?
Pan-blue Kaohsiung city councilors blasted Acting Mayor Yang Ming-chou's new political appointments, saying he filled the spots with Chen Chu's people to give Chen Chi-mai an advantage in the upcoming by-election.
Acting Deputy Mayor Wang Shih-fang has never even headed a bureau or department. The highest position she has ever held is deputy director of the Bureau of Legal Affairs. And then you have Luo Bang-ji at the Civil Affairs Bureau. He has been investigated by the city multiple times.
Yang has reinstated 8 a.m. city government meetings. On the 15th, he responded to the criticism over his personnel decisions.
All of the 28 acting department heads are civil servants. They are not "Mayor Han's people" or "Mayor Chen Chu's people."
Yang says all the hires were internal and he had to personally beg and plead for them to accept the jobs because department heads have to attend city council interpellations and that is very stressful. Pan-green city councilors also say their pan-blue colleagues are overthinking.
This is for personnel stability and city administration cohesion. I don't think you need to put a political spin on it.
The newly formed Kaohsiung City Government is under a magnifying glass although new officials have been on board for just two months. Right now, the upcoming by-election is a critical point and both camps are taking it seriously.