Lawyer Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正), a founder of the non-governmental Taiwan Citizen Union (TCU, 公民組合), announced that the group plans to register as a political party in the near future in a bid to enter the 2016 legislative elections.
Lin made the announcement during the last of the union’s 11 nationwide forums on Saturday in Taipei, which were held to increase citizens’ participation in politics.
The announcement came two months after Lin, who also serves as executive director of the Judicial Reform Foundation, joined hands with former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), Academia Sinica associate research law fellow Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), National Chengchi University professor Hsu Shih-jung (徐世榮) and documentary filmmaker Kevin H. J. Lee (李惠仁) to establish the union.
One of the union’s founding goals is to prevent any single party from establishing hegemony in the legislature.
“The key to carrying out successful political reform lies in the legislature, which is why we intend to enter the next election,” Lin Feng-jeng said.
Lin Feng-jeng said the purpose of the forums was to inform the public that there are still people who care about the nation’s politics and who are willing to get their hands dirty if those in power remain incapable of improving the nation’s political environment and its democracy.
Hsu said the union’s priority was to advocate for a different set of values because they find the “economy-first mind set” of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration utterly unacceptable.
“Taking the controversy surrounding the special regulations for free economic pilot zones as an example, the Ma administration was willing to bend its principles for the sake of establishing the pilot zones, such as by exempting individuals and companies in the zones from the Environmental Impact Assessment Act [環境影響評估法],” Hsu said.
National Taiwan University associate professor of sociology Fan Yun (范雲) said she was not optimistic about the internal reforms of either the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) or the DPP.
“If even Lin I-hsiung could not reform the DPP, who can? If Ma, who doubles as KMT chairman, was not able to reform the KMT when he was popular, how can he now?” Fan asked.
“The only way to move Taiwan forward is to replace parties that are incapable of reforms,” Fan added.
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