Mon, Jul 30, 2001 page8

• Editorial: KMT leader the party's millstone

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  Today the KMT is to get down to the serious part of its congress, elections for its 210-member Central Committee and 31-seat Central Standing Committee. The elections for the Central Standing Committee (CSC) in particular are important because they provide an indication of the party's ability to reform itself.

  The party held an Extraordinary National Congress in June last year in the wake of its election defeat which was a triumph for party solidarity and the status quo and a disaster for any chance the party might have had to reform itself. Five vice chairpersons were elected and a new CSC and, unfortunately, all these senior positions were filled with the same old party hacks we, and almost everyone else in Taiwan, long ago became tired of. What we should have seen was a party which, repudiated at the polls, was finding within that crisis the opportunity to dump some outdated political baggage and begin to redesign policy in accord with what the people of Taiwan actually wanted -- and it says much about the KMT that this would have been such a radical departure. What we in fact saw was the same pompous asses that ran Lien Chan's (連戰) shockingly poor election campaign raised to become the senior movers and shakers within the party.

  It was indicative of the KMT's brain-dead state that Lien, the man whose ineptness as a candidate lost the election for the party, was confirmed as acting party chairman last June. That Lien was elected chairman by the party membership in March this year was also a triumph of the traditional KMT virtue of loyalty over the common sense that tells us Lien is a loser, people don't like him and won't -- in fact didn't -- vote for him. But that Lien was elected as chairman in an election rigged to exclude other candidates, showed just how incapable of reform the party was.

  Something along the same lines is set to be repeated tomorrow where the party chairman submits to the congress the list of CSC members he recommends and they are, inevitably, voted in. It could be, of course, that Lien has had the courage and the intelligence to bring new blood, with maybe some innovative thinking, into the CSC but the auguries are not good.

  Time to write the KMT off as a lost cause, then? Perhaps not. Lien is about as out of touch with his electorate as it is possible to be. But obviously there are still some people with a better sense of what will play to the voters of Peikang than he who can still make their opinions felt. The decision not to include Lien's nonsensical "confederation" reunification model as part of the party's official platform shows that someone is still awake. Of course one swallow doesn't make a summer and one reasonably intelligent decision does not make a smart election strategy.

  And of course Lien might not -- in fact almost certainly will not -- always listen. Even on the "confederation" he displayed headstrong stubbornness yesterday, which suggests that while he may listen to good advice, sometimes it is only with extreme reluctance that he can dismount a favorite hobby horse. There having been an agreement not to put the confederation idea into the KMT's platform, Lien just couldn't resist telling everyone what a wonderful formula it was. Stubborn, vain, impetuous, obviously lacking in political savvy, the amazing thing about Lien is that he has come so far and that the KMT isn't in revolt against the liability its leader poses.
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