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Soong seeks to revive provincial government

People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) said yesterday he would try to restore some of the functions of the Taiwan Provincial Government if he and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) win the president election next year.

"While it is impossible to restore the Taiwan Provincial Government as a whole, we would, however, consider and review the need to restore some of its mechanisms to better take care of people's needs and fight problems," Soong said, without explaining which functions he favored restoring.

Soong made the remarks in a speech at the launch of PFP Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang's (呂學樟) new book.

The book describes the rise of the provincial government and the process by which amendments to the Constitution eliminated it.

PFP spokesman Hwang Yih-jiau (黃義交) said later that Soong didn't explain his remarks further because timing and Soong's current position meant it would be inappropriate.

"What Soong meant was that, if certain functions within the Taiwan Provincial Government were restored, such as ones overseeing the water and electricity supply, transport and so on, they could provide the linkage that would allow the government to efficiently solve people's problems," Hwang said.

Soong became the first and only directly elected governor of Taiwan Province in 1993.

His position was eliminated in 1998 after a National Development Council meeting in 1996 which suggested that the federal structure be downsized and the provincial government abolished.

"The Taiwan Provincial Government was an efficient government body. It was a mistake to abolish the Taiwan Provincial Government then," Soong told the audience, which included several former National Assembly representatives.

"Now many people are thinking that the abolishment of the Taiwan Provincial Government disturbed Taiwan's political structure and the government's ability to implement measures efficiently," Soong said.

At the book presentation, Lu praised Soong's efficiency in tackling problems as governor and took the opportunity to attack then-president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) decision to abolish the post.

"The purpose of the book is to unmask Lee's image as `Mr. Democracy' or the `Father of Taiwan,'" said Lu, who was a two-term National Assembly representative and was among those who disagreed with the elimination of the provincial government.

Lu wrote in the book that he believed Lee's decision to abolish the provincial government was in part a political move meant to undermine Soong's power base and promote Lee's personal political agenda -- the most important element of which was an independent Taiwan.

Saying that Lee's decision had killed the nation's most efficient governing body and thus contributed to the loss of competitiveness that can be seen today, Lu claimed that Lee loves Taiwan only by words while Soong, in his capacity as provincial governor attending to people's concerns, loves Taiwan through deeds.
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