The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is mulling establishing a “party affairs reform committee” to tackle issues brought up by its members following the party’s rout in the Jan. 16 presidential and legislative elections.
The KMT has previously said that a formal report reviewing its disastrous electoral performance would be submitted to the party’s Central Standing Committee on Wednesday, as well as a proposal to establish a reform committee.
However, sources yesterday said that KMT Secretary-General Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) had scrapped plans to publish the report and establish a reform committee simultaneously, out of concern for procedural legitimacy, and instead ordered the reform committee proposal be submitted as a discretionary recommendation to the incoming KMT chairperson.
New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) resigned as KMT chairman following his defeat in the presidential race. A party chairmanship by-election is to be held on March 26.
The KMT’s electoral defeat was the second time the party has lost control of the executive branch since 1949, when it retreated from China to Taiwan.
Its previous failure in a presidential election was in March 2000 with then-KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan’s (連戰) defeat by the Democratic Progressive Party’s Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
A report was published at the time, attributing the KMT’s defeat to eight major causes, blaming James Soong’s (宋楚瑜) split-ticket campaign, made in defiance of the party’s orders, as the most significant factor in the defeat.
The report said that the party failed to understand the needs of the public and feel the pulse of the society and inadequately managed grassroots organizations, adding that the party’s reputation was damaged by the Chung Hsing Bills Finance scandal and Nobel laureate Lee Yuan-tseh’s (李遠哲) public endorsement of Chen.
At the time, a party affairs reform committee was established to act on the report’s findings, which restructured the KMT, eliminated unnecessary personnel and conducted an audit of the party membership rosters that was crucial to improving the KMT’s grassroots organization.
However, the first precedent for the KMT’s so-called “party affairs reform committee” can be found in 1949, after the KMT’s defeat in the Chinese Civil War.
According to then-KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), the main cause for the military-political defeat was that “during 20 years of [KMT] rule, virtually no work to reform the society or improve the welfare of the people was undertaken, and the political, military and educational personnel knew only how to function in officialdom, but paid no heed to the implementation of the Three Principles of the People.”
Chiang said that the KMT must “completely reforge itself” before it could embark on “the task of [national] renaissance.”
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