Despite the official decision announced by the KMT and PFP headquarters to drop the idea of forming an Alliance Policy-making Committee (國親聯盟決策委員會) as the supreme policy-making body of their political alliance, some members from both parties expressed their opposition to the move.
These party members expressed concern that the move to abort the committee would have a negative impact on the pan-blue alliance's presidential bid next March.
KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
Instead, said KMT spokesman Alex Tsai (
According to PFP spokesman Hwang Yih-jiau (黃義交), the eight panels will each responsible for issues concerning the legislature, politics, publicity, campaign affairs, cross-strait affairs, finance and economy, education and culture, and administration.
Each panel will be co-convened by a KMT and a PFP representative and an additional panel could be established when it is deemed necessary, Hwang said.
Soong added that although he and Lien will be responsible for all decisions under the new system, any policy they come up with will still have to be supported by their own parties.
Noting that there is a fundamental difference in the function of the policy-making committee and the panels, KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (
"While the main role of these panels is to manage technical details concerning the presidential campaign for the two leaders, the policy-making committee was to be in charge of making strategic planning decisions on all campaigned-related issues," Apollo Chen said.
"It's rather weird, I think, to not have a policy-making body but to have both Lien and Soong play the role of strategic planners while at the same time the two will be the ones fighting the actual fight," Apollo Chen said, referring to the presidential race.
PFP Legislator Lee Hung-chun (
"I don't think it will be good for the alliance's presidential campaign to have both Lien and Soong dragged to the frontline all the time," Lee said.
"To simply abort the committee is not going quash the rumor," added Apollo Chen, referring to media speculation which suggested that the parties decided to drop the committee because there was severe infighting among party heavyweights vying for certain positions within the alliance. Such speculation had been denied by KMT Secretary-General Lin Feng-Cheng (
While it is hard to finger which party initiated the idea to have the committee dropped, PFP Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (
The committee had been aborted to settle the issue, Liu said.
Liu also opposes the idea of having the eight panels substitute for the policy-making committee noting that such a move will only make issues more complicated.
"If media speculation is true, then the issue over party members vying for certain positions will remain whether or not there is a policy-making committee or joint panels," Apollo Chen said.
"The greatest problem facing the KMT-PFP alliance is not [infighting] itself but the intention to sweep the problem under the carpet and pretend that it doesn't exist," Apollo Chen said.
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