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Pan-blues want to hold a referendum

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-People First Party (PFP) alliance yesterday announced the launch of a petition drive aimed at realizing its campaign pledge to hold a referendum about merging Taipei City and Taipei County, and hopes it can hold the referendum simultaneously with the Legislative Yuan elections later this year.

KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰), who is challenging President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) re-election bid, has included the restructuring of the nation's administrative districts as part of his campaign platform. He proposes merging Taipei City and Taipei County, Taichung City and Taichung County as well as Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County.

"There is no need to wait until I am elected to realize these dreams," said Lien last night at a campaign rally held in Chungho, Taipei County.

"We will start the signature drive tonight to initiate a referendum on the merging of Taipei City and Taipei County. We hope to hold the referendum at the end of the year alongside the legislative election," Lien said.

Lien said unlike the March 20 "defensive" referendum initiated by Chen, his call for a petition on the matter would set the record for being the first time in Taiwan's history a referendum initiated by the people and not the president would be held.

Earlier in the day, Lien also unveiled his team of economic advisers in the company of PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) and former economic affairs minister and KMT Vice Chairman Chiang Ping-kun (江炳坤) at a press conference.

At the event, Lien criticized Chen's economic policies as "irrational" and said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration was leading the nation into dire economic straits.

"Under the governance of an incompetent leader, Taiwan has been going under," Lien said at the news conference, which was held at the alliance's national campaign headquarters.

"The focus of the election should therefore be on the nation's economic outlook, and how we should position Taiwan on the world economic stage," he said.

The team introduced by Lien yesterday is composed of 50 individuals, the majority of whom are academics with specializations in economics and finance.

"The economic team of the KMT-PFP alliance can not only propose pragmatic solutions to economic problems, but can also build a bridge with world-class economic figures," Lien said.

The KMT chairman was referring to his announcement on Monday that the 1980 Nobel economics prize winner Lawrence Klein had accepted an invitation to serve as the alliance's economic adviser.

Former premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), who currently serves as the KMT's vice chairman as well as the chairman of the Chunghua Institution for Economic Research (中經院), was absent from the news conference.

The executive officer of the KMT-affiliated think tank, Tsai Hsung-hsiung (蔡勳雄), said the reason for Siew's absence was that he was "recovering at home from knee surgery."

Various polls conducted by local media organizations indicated that Lien's lead in the polls had narrowed after Saturday's large turnout for the pan-green-backed "228 Hand-in-Hand Rally."

According to rally organizers, at least 2 million people participated in the 487km-long human chain to protest against the nearly 500 Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan.

Dismissing Saturday's rally as "a mere jolly event of boisterousness," Lien said that, according to the results of opinion polls, economic issues and people's well-being were still the primary concerns of the general public.

"Holding hands won't make the problem go away," the pan-blue camps' presidential candidate said. "The only way to protect Taiwan is through economic development."

Meanwhile, the pan-blue alliance yesterday released another TV spot promoting the Lien-Soong ticket.

The TV ad features a jogger who keeps getting phone calls from relatives who encounter robbers and vandals. A KMT spokesman said the ad symbolized the decay of public order over the past four years under the rule of the DPP.
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