New Power Party (NPP) Chairman Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) yesterday said he would try to convince attorney Chen Yu-fan (陳雨凡) to stay after she said on Friday that she would quit the party.
Chen wanted to leave the NPP primarily because of a petition launched by party members calling for her expulsion as punishment for withdrawing from next year’s legislative election, but she might have misunderstood the process of such petitions, Hsu told the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily.
As the NPP highly values the opinions of its members, it allows members to submit proposals to the disciplinary committee through collecting signatures, he said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“It is just a proposal,” he said. “It would not necessarily lead to anything.”
Such petitions are part of a democratic process that every new party must go through, Hsu said.
“There is no need to overreact and we would try to convince [Chen] to say,” he added.
Chen on Sept. 27 said at a news conference with the Democratic Progressive Party that she would withdraw from the legislative election in Taipei’s Xinyi and southern Songshan district to pool votes for DPP legislative candidate Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華).
Her decision drew a backlash within the NPP, with party members saying that as a legislative nominee she should have discussed the matter with the party’s nomination panel before making the announcement.
The petition has been formally accepted by the disciplinary committee, although she had not received any notice from the party, Chen said on Friday.
That the NPP would punish her for supporting a DPP candidate in the district shows that “the party is apparently unwilling to fight for the goal of uniting all Taiwanese against Beijing,” she said.
“I find this completely unacceptable and I am utterly disappointed with the NPP,” she said, adding that she has already applied to quit the party.
On Saturday, NPP decisionmaking committee member Hsiao Hsin-cheng (蕭新晟) also announced that he would leave the party.
“I have only heard of members being fired for joining elections without their party’s nomination, but never for withdrawing from elections,” he said.
The NPP has stated its mission is to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty, yet it has been treating the DPP, which shares a similar stance, as its archenemy, he said.
“I find it unacceptable that the NPP is choosing a path that prioritizes its own future over the nation’s future at this critical juncture, ignoring the elephant in the room,” he said.
If he must choose between growing the NPP and protecting Taiwan against China, he would choose the latter without hesitation, he said.
The party has not hesitated to protect Taiwan against China, but doing that does not necessarily involve collaborating with the DPP, NPP spokesman Chen Chih-ming (陳志明) said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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