Both Premier Wu Den-yih and Interior Minister Jiang Yi-huah declined to speculate Sunday on the probability that the next presidential and legislative elections will be held on the same day. They said it is up to the Central Election Commission (CEC) to determine whether the next presidential poll should be combined with the next legislative elections. The next presidential poll is scheduled to take place in March 2012 and the next legislative elections are likely to be held in December 2011 or January 2012, if the existing rules are followed. Some ruling Kuomintang (KMT) legislators are planning to propose a combination of presidential and legislative polls in a bid to save electoral costs and reduce the impact of excessive social movement caused by people returning to their registered residences to vote. CEC spokesman Teng Tien-you said the commission has decided to convene a meeting in January to discuss the matter, in the hope that a consensus can be reached in the first half of 2011 and the issue finalized by June at the latest. CEC Chairwoman Chang Po-ya said the combined poll initiative involves many issues that will need to be addressed and deliberated over. She said that if the government's proposed absentee voting system is introduced for the 2012 presidential election only, the holding of the next presidential and legislative polls in tandem will be impossible. Lin Yi-shih, executive director of the KMT's Policy Committee, called on the government to consider the issue with prudence. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has yet to put forward any concrete ideas about the issue. Nevertheless, Hung Yao-fu, a DPP vice secretary- general, said it would not be a blessing for society if the KMT schemes to implement combined presidential and legislative polls simply for its own political gains. (By Lin Shen-hsu, Hsieh Chia-chen, Wen Kuei-hsiang, Lee Shu-hua and Deborah Kuo) 