Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
While the idea of merger between the two pan-blue parties is not a novel idea, the timing and the manner in which the proposal was made -- at a KMT Central Standing Committee meeting yesterday -- were what intrigued political observers the most.
Chen Li-hung (
Lien's party leadership has been at stake since the March 20 presidential election when he failed in his second bid to win the presidency.
Although high-ranking KMT officials, citing the need for party unity amid the disputes and lawsuits stemming from the election, agreed to rally behind Lien, he has been faced with growing calls, especially from younger members, to shoulder responsibility for the electoral loss and step down.
A number of younger members have urged the party to quicken the transfer of leadership to a new generation such as Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who are both party vice chairmen.
"In view of such pressure, initiating the merger plan now allows Lien to buy time to stay at helm since the whole merger deal would put calls for shuffling the party leadership on hold for the time being," Chen said.
Echoing Chen's observation, Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), a research fellow at the Taiwan Research Institution, said that the merger proposal "appears to be a strategy to safeguard Lien and [PFP Chairman James] Soong's (宋楚瑜) party leadership."
The PFP was formed by Soong after he failed in his maverick bid to win the 2000 presidential election. Some KMT members left the party to join PFP.
Liao said the 109-year-old KMT might face another split should the merger go through.
"KMT members, notably those of the pro-localization faction, might abandon the party to seek a future outside the party," he said.
Should the merger lead to number of pro-localization mem-bers leaving the party, Liao said that "the disadvantage would be on the side of the KMT, because the party's political line would fall further away from Taiwan's mainstream opinion."
"Such a scenario would not be good for the nation because it would mean that there is still a political party in Taiwan which submerges itself in the `China-box,'" Liao said, referring to the KMT's pro-Beijing stance on cross-strait relations.
Should the pro-localization members leave the KMT as a result of a merger, Liao speculated that the merger would acutally have been aimed at "eliminating" members regarded as loyal to former president and KMT chairman Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
Political observers note that several major issues would have to be resolved before a merger could take place, such as what roles Lien and Soong would have in the new group, questions about the KMT's assets, distribution of party resources and nomination for the legislative elections in December.
The KMT Central Standing Committee, the party's highest decision-making body, yesterday approved Lien's proposal to push the merger.
While Lien said that the proposal was approved unanimously, a number of committee members had voiced objections when they first learned about the merger idea.
It has been reported that Lien and the party's five vice chairmen met last Sunday and reached an unanimous agreement on the merger plan. Newspaper reports on Tuesday about the agreement shocked many KMT and PFP legislators, a number of whom criticized the party's lack of transparency in decision-making.
The lawmakers also complained about having to learn about the merger proposal from media reports rather than from the parties themselves.
KMT lawmakers such as Legislator Lee Chia-chin (李嘉進) said that "the course of the merger might serve as an opportunity for the party to learn what `democratic mechanism' really means."
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