People First Party (PFP) Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) yesterday announced that she would quit the PFP and return to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), a move observers say was possibly prompted by the KMT's plan to tighten its regulations for primary elections.
Lee, who has expressed her intention to join the Taipei mayoral election, declined to comment on PFP Chairman James Soong's (宋楚瑜) possible candidacy for that post.
"I have been standing for the merger of the KMT and PFP, but the two parties still failed to merge after the local government elections," she said yesterday afternoon during a press conference at the legislature.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
"Most of my supporters expected me to return to the KMT, and with no immediate merger in sight, I decided to listen to my voters' suggestions," she said.
Stressing that she had discussed the issue with Soong, who she said "respects my decision," Lee said she will officially join the KMT very soon. She refused to say whether her desire to run in the year-end Taipei mayoral race was involved in her decision to leave the PFP.
But Lee's announcement came just after the KMT revealed its plan to tighten regulations. Under the plan, the party will now require people to hold KMT membership for at least four months before they can run in any elections for public posts as KMT candidates.
Liao Feng-teh (
"But we will also establish a sunset clause, which stipulates that the regulations will take effect four months after they are passed by the Central Standing Committee," he added.
The new regulations were seen as a strategy to avoid the possibility of Soong entering the Taipei mayoral race as a KMT member by returning to the party to win the primaries. But KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday denied such speculation, saying that the revisions were passed to make up for shortcomings in the old regulations.
"Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei's (周錫瑋) return to the KMT in less than four months before the primaries drew some criticism from the grassroots, and so some revisions are necessary," he said yesterday morning at the KMT's headquarters.
In response to another PFP member's defection from the party, PFP spokesman Hsieh Kung-pin (
"The fourth consensus reached in last December's Ma-Soong meeting stated that if any individuals leave the PFP before legal problems are solved relating to the KMT-PFP merger, the PFP will understand and respect their decisions," he said yesterday at the party's headquarters.
Following the KMT's landslide victory in last months' local government elections, the PFP's diminishing political power has prompted many PFP members to return to its larger pan-blue ally, especially after the two leaders failed to reach any agreement on a merger in their meetings.
With the KMT's tightening its regulations for primaries, the PFP may have to prepare for the worst, as more members are expected to follow Lee's path in order to run as KMT candidates in the year-end mayoral elections in Taipei and Kaohsiung, and the city council races.
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