Amid claims from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that its chairman, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), wishes to meet with People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to work out an alliance for the January legislative elections, the PFP accused the KMT of sabotaging the PFP behind its back.
According to PFP sources, while the KMT said it wanted to cooperate with the PFP in the elections, it was telling potential PFP legislator hopefuls to “look at the big picture” and to back out from the elections.
For example, the sources said, Taipei City Councilor Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) of the PFP, who was planning to run in the legislative elections in the Nangang (南港) Neihu (內湖) constituency, has been pressured by the KMT to back out of the campaign.
Sources from the PFP said the party would announce its list of nominees for legislators as early as next week, adding that as well as about 10 nominees for Taiwan proper, the PFP would also nominate candidates for Taiwan’s -outlying islands.
The move by the PFP, which split from the KMT in 2000 under the leadership of Soong — a former KMT secretary-general — was largely interpreted as a sign of disunity in the KMT-dominated pan-blue camp, signaling that Soong and his tiny party would go their own way in the elections.
The source added that no further details could be given at this time because one or two potential legislative nominees were planning to back out of the elections because of KMT pressure.
When asked for comment on the KMT’s alleged strategy of “seeking cooperation while attacking at the time same,” PFP Secretary-General Chin Ching-sheng (秦金生) said he “has gotten used to it.”
He added he did not wish to discuss the issue because the KMT would no doubt deny it.
“But if you ask around among the grassroots politicians, you’ll know [about the KMT’s tactics,]” he said.
On Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) recent remarks that Ma has not been able to get in touch with Soong on the telephone in the past month to set up a meeting to discuss cooperation between the two parties in the elections, Chin said he was unaware of the matter.
The PFP chairman’s office, meanwhile, also denied Wu’s remarks, saying it had not received a call from the Presidential Office since the Ma administration took office in 2008, adding that any news relating to the Ma-Soong meeting had only been gleaned from the media.
PFP sources said that not only was the KMT sabotaging PFP campaign efforts, it also spread propaganda to persuade pan-blue supporters that they should not support the PFP, in a bid to try to force the PFP out of the election.
According to PFP sources, the party has received many calls asking it to see the big picture and stand united. Propaganda was suspected because it was obvious that those callers were organized because they all sounded as if they were reading straight from a script, the sources added.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
TRANSLATED BY JAKE CHUNG, STAFF WRITER
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