Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said on Saturday that no "nominal merger" of the pan-blue camp will occur, despite the recent claims of one Chinese-language newspaper. Ma said the merger was an eventual goal for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which will be achieved at the appropriate time.
Ma made the remarks at a news conference on Aug. 14 in New York before he delivered a speech to the Association of the Chinese Academics and Professionals in Flushing, New York, which was also the last stop in the city government's "investment procurement tour" in the US.
Viewed as the most promising presidential candidate for the pan-blue camp in 2008, Ma -- also one of the KMT's vice chairmen -- was inevitably asked to comment on the political situation in Taiwan, the KMT's future and cross-strait relations.
When asked about reports that the KMT, People First Party (PFP) and New Party will merge into one party before October, Ma said he he knew nothing about such reports, and said his opinion would be the same as the KMT's other leaders, who rebutted the possibility of "nominal merger."
"A merger is a merger. There is no problem of merging the three parties in form," Ma said. "We are just waiting for the appropriate time once a consensus on the merger is achieved."
Ma added that the KMT has already decided that it, the PFP and the New Party will be integrated into one group, during the KMT's Central Standing Committee meeting on May 19. He said the parties have been forging ahead with this goal.
In response to the dispute surrounding the KMT's political future, Ma said the KMT has been developing a policy platform incorporating "localization" over the past decade, and he thought "there is no need to highlight the problem [of a split] with the KMT's pro-localization faction."
Having served as the Vice Chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council from 1991 to 1992, Ma said that the tensions between cross-strait relations have increased since the presidential election in March, and said that the dispute over the validity of the "one China" policy or the concept of "one country on either side of the Strait" is the greatest obstacle to negotiations between Taiwan and China.
"We cannot depend on an arms race to maintain the peace. We have to establish a mechanism of mutual trust," Ma said.
Ma also worried about the irrational behavior demonstrated by Chinese football fans during the Asian Cup, which he said was nationalism brewed up by populism.
"It will be adverse for cross-strait relations if such emotions continue to ferment," Ma said.
During his ten-hour stop in New York, Ma spent about two hours with his eldest daughter, Ma Wei-chung (
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