Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Acting Chairperson Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠), who is hoping to be elected chairperson, yesterday said that there is no need to change the party name to reverse its fortunes.
Huang, who announced her bid on Wednesday, when former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) declared he would stay out of the race, yesterday reiterated that her decision to run was prompted by public expectations of party reform and has nothing to do with rumors that plans were afoot to block outgoing Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) from the position.
When asked whether the KMT should remove “China” from its name, Huang said: “A name change would not alter its fate,” referring to the practice of changing characters in a name to reverse fortunes.
Photo: CNA
“The name has a history. It is a nation-founding political party, establishing the Republic of China. The party was founded by Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) and revolutionary martyrs to achieve democracy, freedom and equality,” she said. “The spirit is long-standing, universal and should be maintained by all of us.”
“All I have to say is, the Chinese Nationalist Party is the Republic of China Nationalist Party,” she said.
Separately yesterday, Chen Ming-yih (陳明義), a former New Taipei City councilor who announced his chairperson bid on Thursday, dropped out of the race, attributing his withdrawal to the party’s “obscure” and “illusory” intra-party election procedures.
After hearing many calls from friends and comrades for party reform and for him to act, “I picked up the [registration] form and paid the [NT$1.6 million, US$47,958] fee after persuading my wife and without my mom knowing,” Chen wrote on Facebook yesterday.
“Huang joining the race unexpectedly, Hau’s decision not to run, the obscure party member name list and the illusory signature-collecting regulations all smacked of risk and fickleness,” he said.
“Within only 24 hours, political allies who had been enthusiastic have descended into silence and those who had promised to endure the party’s misery have revealed that they are in a bind,” he said. “The focus of the election has become local versus non-local and pro-Hung versus anti-Hung.”
Chen said he decided not to run “to avoid putting [his] allies in a dilemma and to keep his family from worry.”
On Thursday, he said that after he paid the fee, he received a disk containing information about party members and a pad of forms to collect signatures, but the disk had only dozens of telephone numbers without the members’ names.
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