Committee decision provokes anger

Despite the official decision announced by the KMT and PFP headquarters to drop the idea of forming an Alliance Policy-making Committee (國親聯盟決策委員會) as the supreme policy-making body of their political alliance, some members from both parties expressed their opposition to the move.

These party members expressed concern that the move to abort the committee would have a negative impact on the pan-blue alliance's presidential bid next March.

KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and his PFP counterpart James Soong (宋楚瑜) on Wednesday confirmed that there won't be a KMT-PFP Alliance Policy-making Committee, which was part of a deal signed by both Lien and Soong in a memorandum of understanding at a meeting in February to serve as a platform between the two parties to thrash out issues relating to KMT-PFP cooperation.

Instead, said KMT spokesman Alex Tsai (蔡正元), the two parties will set up eight panels to handle campaign-related issues and the decisions over those issues will be made by Lien and Soong, who are expected to pair up to compete against President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his running mate in next March's presidential election.

According to PFP spokesman Hwang Yih-jiau (黃義交), the eight panels will each responsible for issues concerning the legislature, politics, publicity, campaign affairs, cross-strait affairs, finance and economy, education and culture, and administration.

Each panel will be co-convened by a KMT and a PFP representative and an additional panel could be established when it is deemed necessary, Hwang said.

Soong added that although he and Lien will be responsible for all decisions under the new system, any policy they come up with will still have to be supported by their own parties.

Noting that there is a fundamental difference in the function of the policy-making committee and the panels, KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) expressed his opposition to having the policy-making committee totally dropped.

"While the main role of these panels is to manage technical details concerning the presidential campaign for the two leaders, the policy-making committee was to be in charge of making strategic planning decisions on all campaigned-related issues," Apollo Chen said.

"It's rather weird, I think, to not have a policy-making body but to have both Lien and Soong play the role of strategic planners while at the same time the two will be the ones fighting the actual fight," Apollo Chen said, referring to the presidential race.

PFP Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said that by dropping the policy-making body, it means both Lien and Soong will often find themselves on the frontlines of the campaign since they will be the ones making the soles decisions on all campaigned-related issues.

"I don't think it will be good for the alliance's presidential campaign to have both Lien and Soong dragged to the frontline all the time," Lee said.

"To simply abort the committee is not going quash the rumor," added Apollo Chen, referring to media speculation which suggested that the parties decided to drop the committee because there was severe infighting among party heavyweights vying for certain positions within the alliance. Such speculation had been denied by KMT Secretary-General Lin Feng-Cheng (林豐正) who said the policy-making committee was dropped simply to improve the administrative efficiency of the upcoming presidential campaign.