Lien says DPP must get `a dose of its own medicine' in defense of decision

KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) admitted yesterday that his party is giving the DPP "a dose of its own medicine" by banning KMT members from joining any Cabinet assembled by the DPP.

In an attempt to defend his party's decision last week to forbid party members from joining the DPP government, Lien said his party is turning the tables on the DPP by borrowing DPP tactics employed in 1996, when it prohibited its members from joining the KMT government.

Lien said he wondered why the approach should be criticized by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as a narrow-minded partisan decision and questioned the justification for the president's denouncement.

Attending a KMT meeting in Penghu County, Lien told journalists that the KMT ban was only imposed on Cabinet-level posts. KMT members, which accounted for the bulk of the government's senior officials before the DPP swept to power in 2000, can still serve in other government and military posts, he said.

Lien noted that the DPP set the precedent of banning party members from joining the government on April 10, 1996, when the DPP Central Standing Committee decided to reject a KMT offer of Cabinet posts for DPP members.

Lien said Chen should also remember that he snubbed the KMT government's offer of membership to the National Unification Council when he served as mayor of Taipei City.

Noting that in a democracy, the ruling party should bear the full responsibility for governing and should face the consequences of its actions, Lien said his party respected the DPP's right to form the Cabinet after it became the largest party in the legislature.

He said the DPP should not "run against the grain of democracy" by forming a Cabinet of various parties.

Political analysts have said that the KMT forbade its members from serving in the DPP Cabinet out of concern that the ruling party might try to split it by wooing some of its members with Cabinet posts.

The DPP and its allies are a dozen seats shy of a simple majority in the 225-seat legislature and is aggressively seeking the support of other parties, not least its arch-rival the KMT.

However, the KMT's decision has been excoriated by Chen, who told a group of overseas supporters Friday that no party should have a monopoly on talent that should belong to the whole country and that everyone should contribute their ability to national development, irrespective of party affiliation.

Chen blamed the KMT for what he called putting its own interests before the welfare of the whole nation, by saying that any individual with talent or ability, regardless of their political affiliation, is a resource of Taiwan and its people.