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Soong says he wants joint ticket

In a show of commitment to the principle of cooperation with the KMT in the 2004 presidential election, PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) said yesterday that the pan-blue parties favor a single, joint ticket for the poll.

"I have visited certain senior KMT members recently to convey my New Year greetings," Song said, "and we have reached a strong consensus that the KMT and PFP should only nominate one, joint ticket."

Soong was addressing reporters who had asked him to comment on the prospects for cooperation between himself and KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰).

Soong, a former KMT secretary general expelled from the party in 1999 for standing against the official KMT candidate, Lien, in the campaign for the 2000 presidential election, said that the senior KMT members he had consulted included vice chairmen and senior, long-serving party officials and that they had all urged him to press ahead with arrangements for cooperation.

But Soong remained evasive about whether he was prepared to play second fiddle to Lien, saying simply, "We understand that there can be only one president and today I have sworn to my ancestors that I will not do anything just for my personal interests."

Stressing that there were many obstacles to any merger between the KMT and PFP, Soong said that the first stage of the two parties' cooperation should include creating a shadow Cabinet and campaign team after the Lunar New Year holidays.

"We believe that what the people are really concerned about is not who will be first and who will be second on the ticket, but that the team should be competent and reliable," Soong said. "I will visit Chairman Lien Chan in a few days to discuss how to create this mechanism."

Soong made the remarks as he visited the Soong family ancestral shrine in Pingchen township, Taoyuan County.

A senior source from the KMT, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Taipei Times yesterday that the key element to accomplishing cooperation was not the attitudes of either Lien or Soong but whether senior officials of the two sides will be prepared to sacrifice their personal ambitions for power to accommodate the deal.

"Actually, Lien, Soong and a few major leaders from the two parties have already completed negotiations," the source said, "and the outcome is clear -- it is the Lien-Soong ticket.

"But many members of the two parties' elites expect their own master to run as presidential candidate so that they will have opportunities for selection as ministers or to share government resources," the source said.

He added that to eliminate possible opposition from the two parties' members, the immediate task facing Lien and Soong is to figure out a method for distributing positions among the parties' elites.
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