PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) reaffirmed yesterday that any cooperation between his party and the KMT in the 2004 presidential election will not rule out any combination on the joint ticket, although the integration process of the two parties will have to be done in stages.
Soong said that the integration will be a complex issue involving a wide range of matters and he added that the parties should carefully consider all the possible options before starting consultations.
He said that the two parties should work on minimizing party differences and point out any misgivings about the process to create a friendly atmosphere conducive to the start of negotiations.
Soong claimed that during the 2000 presidential election -- in which Soong trailed President Chen Shui-bian (
Regarding PFP Vice Chairman Chang Chao-hsiung's (張昭雄) remark a day earlier that the KMT should sever its ties with organized crime and money politics, Soong said that the two parties have "no need to continue to argue this point."
However, he also said the KMT should explain how it is going to handle the problem or else the public will suspect that cooperation between the two parties will be no more than a resurrection of the old KMT.
He suggested that the two parties should each resolve their differences within their respective parties in the next two to three months, then the parties could begin negotiations and consider all possible options, such as whose names will be on the presidential ticket.
Soong said the parties will look at all viable options, work out how to push for them and then unveil them to the public to make its choice.
He stressed that the two parties should not continue to play up the "pan-blue" alliance and should not rule out independents. He also said that the integration must start early so as not to repeat the mistakes made in the Dec. 7 Kaohsiung mayoral election.
The PFP did not field its own candidate in that election, and only threw its support behind the KMT's Huang Jun-ying (黃俊英) in the last week of campaigning. Huang lost by a small margin to Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) of the DPP.
Lien and Soong announced that the two parties were going to field a joint ticket for the 2004 presidential election on Saturady at a press conference held at the Ambassador Hotel in Taipei.
The two party leaders had stressed at the press conference that no exact timetable had been established for deciding on which two candidates would be on the ticket, or who would fill the presidential and vice-presidential spots.
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