The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) upcoming chairperson election has been marred by controversies, which have sent the party establishment at all levels into a “blue depression,” former KMT vice chairman and chairman candidate Steve Chan (詹啟賢) said yesterday, urging all candidates to focus on important issues.
Chan, who is of six candidates, made the remarks on Facebook, amid a series of issues ahead of the May 20 election.
The issues include the allegation that some candidates recruited “dummy party members” to boost their chances of winning, and accusations by KMT Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) camp that former vice president Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) sought to obtain KMT members’ personal information before the party made it available to all candidates.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
“The KMT chairperson vote has been dogged by a seemingly endless string of controversies, which have not only unnerved many party members, but also plunged KMT headquarters and its local branches into a ‘blue depression,’” Chan said.
Disputes between certain candidates have also damaged the KMT and run counter to the public’s expectations of the party, he added.
Chan said the incidents have prompted many younger KMT lawmakers to draw up a joint statement, which is to be published soon, urging the candidates to focus on how to lead the KMT back to power.
Turning to next year’s local elections, Chan said the KMT should not settle for merely winning two of the six special municipalities, a goal set by Hau on Sunday.
“We must not impose restrictions on ourselves and should instead improve our electoral capability in the south,” Chan said.
“There will be no winning the 2020 presidential election without victory in next year’s vote, and there will not be a KMT without victory in the 2020 election,” Chan said.
The progress and outcome of the KMT’s chairperson election will determine whether the party can march toward its goals in the next few years, he added.
The six people in the running so far are: Hau, Wu, Chan, KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Corp president Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) and former KMT legislator Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛).
They are required to collect the signatures of at least 3 percent of party members before April 15 to make their candidacy official.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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