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KMT should focus on young: Ma

In response to calls for reform and new leadership from within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said the party should groom more young leaders to allow for the revitalization of the party.

Ma yesterday said the KMT hasn't done enough to cultivate members from the younger generations.

"The party should cultivate party members who are 20 years younger than me," Ma urged yesterday.

Ma, also the KMT's vice chairman and the party's No. 1 political star, yesterday responded to calls from a group of young KMT members who demanded that the party give more opportunities to young people and concede its failures in the presidential election immediately.

Ma said he agreed with Taoyuan County Commissioner Chu Li-luan (朱立倫) that the party shouldn't put all of its attention on him; rather, the party should put more emphasis on younger people.

More than 20 representatives of a KMT unit known as the "Chunghsing (Rejuvenation) Elite Group" (中興菁英班), established two years ago to revitalize the party's standing among young people, recently called on the party to face up to the mistakes it made in the election campaign, investigate the reasons for its failure and implement immediate reform.

However, Ma yesterday refused to admit the party's defeat, saying that the legal procedures to recount the election ballots and investigate the assassination attempt on the president were still ongoing.

"It is not time to concede defeat yet, as the pan-blue alliance's lawmakers are still working on the case to recount the ballots and are still exploring the truth regarding the shooting," Ma said.

"We have to wait until our efforts have come to some conclusion to concede the election," Ma said.

The KMT's Organization and Development Affairs Committee director Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) yesterday also lambasted the young members who called on the party to concede defeat, calling them "opportunistic" and asking them to leave the party if they persist with their comments.

Ting said the party currently was not in the mood to embrace defeat and every effort has been made to uncover the truth of the "unjust election."

"Those who think the KMT was defeated should leave the party," Ting said.

The spokesperson for the group, Chiu Teh-hung (邱德宏), yesterday countered Ting's remarks, saying "Ting was about to pack up his stuff and leave the party, and any remarks he makes at this point are useless.

"Ting is still using his old ideas to look at the young people in the party. The KMT's failure has a lot to do with people like him," Chiu said.

Chiu said Ting's remarks reflected the party's hackneyed tradition of vilifying those who speak harsh truths.

"They claimed that they were employing `massive human force' to recount the ballot. Frankly, they are just asking people to endorse a failed election result," Chiu said.

In response to the KMT's internal calls for reform, the Democratic Progressive Party yesterday said the core problem of the KMT's reforms lies in its top leadership, which should shoulder the responsibilities for the election failures and face the younger members' call for generational transfer of power.

DPP Deputy Secretary General Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) yesterday said it was wonderful that the young KMT members could see the truth of the KMT's failures and that the party hadn't simply lost the election by a narrow margin of some 30,000 votes, but that it was the DPP which had gained 1.5 million votes compared to the last presidential election.
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