KMT spokesman Alex Tsai (
Tsai made the remark yesterday after KMT Central Standing Committee's weekly meeting, which passed a motion not to establish the KMT-PFP policy making body.
A motion was also passed at the meeting to unveil the pan-blue camp presidential and vice presidential candidates by the end of this month.
In addition, the KMT and PFP will set up its presidential campaign headquarters at the KMT-owned Pate Building, located on Pate Road in Taipei, by the end of May.
Tsai said Lien and Soong decided to abort their earlier agreement of establishing a KMT-PFP decision making body at their meeting last week.
Without the Alliance Policy-making Committee, Tsai said the KMT-PFP alliance will set up eight panels to handle campaign-related issues, and the decisions over those issues will be jointly made by Lien and Soong.
Denying widespread speculation that the policy-making committee was dropped because of severe infighting among party heavyweights for a position on the committee, KMT Secretary-General Lin Feng-Cheng (林豐正) said that the Alliance Policy-making Committee was dropped to improve the administrative efficiency of the upcoming presidential campaign.
Media speculation suggested that there were some problems with members of both parties vying for certain positions within the alliance after it failed to announce the of the committee last week.
KMT vice chairmen Wu Po-hsiung (
Such arrangements will not damage the cooperation between the two parties, Wu said. Instead, the decision to abandon the committee will help both parties to gather different opinions from within.
Each party will reach a consensus on issues before making a decision, Wu said.
Wu said that the minority will not lead the majority. Regarding infighting over committee positions, Wu said he had never heard of such a thing.
Meanwhile, Ma said as long as the two parties can reach an agreement and the administration can run seamlessly, how the organization is structured should not be an issue.
Commenting on the policy-making committee's demise, DPP Deputy Secretary General Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said the "rushed engagement" between Lien and Soong was put in place to prevent Ma from grabbing a position on the presidential ticket.
Lee also said that Soong could become a "runaway bride" at any time and that this marriage of convenience would not bring happiness to anyone.
Lee also said that because both the KMT and the PFP were only looking at the financial benefits that come with the "marriage," power would not be divided well between the two.
"Everyone knew very well about Soong's strong wish to run for the presidency, and if the KMT and the PFP could not agree on a decision-making body, will Soong become a "runaway bride?," asked Lee.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400