The power struggle inside the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took a dramatic turn yesterday as the Welfare State Alliance (
At the party congress today, the alliance plans to propose that all factions within the party be dissolved. The DPP is holding its congress mainly to discuss rules for nominating legislative candidates next month.
The alliance will propose that once the party congress passes the proposal, anyone who sets up faction offices, procures members and membership fees, holds faction congresses and convenes policy task forces be disciplined severely by the party's internal disciplinary committee.
"The alliance will be dissolved immediately after the party congress consents to the proposal," Legislator Lee Chun-yee (
"Dissolution of the factions has been talked about for many years, but it has not come to anything yet," Lee said.
"After President Chen Shui-bian (
"Dissolution can end the public's worries that factions are all about political booty division. Factions are really an insult to the DPP's development and progress," Lee said.
"All DPP members should have the same ideals, and we hope that when the DPP is in power, it's the party, rather than a faction, that's in power," Legislator Hsu Jung-shu (
The New Tide faction (
The Welfare State Alliance also proposed yesterday morning that all candidates for legislators-at-large be nominated by the party headquarters, instead of being decided on by the party members at the polls.
The move was meant to counter the Justice Alliance and the New Tide's proposal: the three legislator-at-large categories -- experts, politicians and minorities -- should be reduced to two -- experts and politicians -- with both sharing 50 percent of seats.
The political group would be decided on by a vote of party members and a poll, each with a 50-percent weighting, according to the proposal, while the expert group would be nominated entirely by a nomination committee whose members would be appointed by the party chairman (Chen), and approved by the party's Central Executive Committee. The expert nomination list then would need to be approved by the party congress.
But later in the afternoon, the Welfare State Alliance changed its mind and supported the other proposal, saying only that nominees for the expert group did not have to be party members for at least two years, so long as the nominees knew and identified with the DPP's ideals and had contributed to the DPP and society substantially.
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