Thursday, June 05, 2014

DPP spurns Ma’s trade conference to organize its own

By Chris Wang  /  Staff reporter

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday said that it would not send representatives to the national affairs conference on economics and trade organized by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration and that it would organize a civic economics conference to address “the real economic issues.”

The government’s national conference focuses only on trade, exports and reliance on China — “relatively old thinking on national economics policy” — and would not address people’s expectations and Taiwan’s economic woes, DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said after the party’s weekly Central Standing Committee (CSC) meeting, the first CSC since DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) assumed the post again.

Rather than sending a delegation to the conference next month, the DPP has decided to organize a civic economics conference in August for public discussion on a wide range of substantial and urgent issues, among them the plight of the working poor, high housing prices and stagnant domestic production, Lin said.

According to the Executive Yuan, the national affairs conference on economics and trade is to be held from July 26 to July 28.

The organization of a civic constitutional conference, which the Sunflower movement had demanded, was also discussed in the CSC meeting, the spokesperson added.

The party is scheduled to hold its party congress on July 20 to select members of the Central Executive Committee and the CSC. CSC members are elected among CEC members.

With the two committees serving as the DPP’s decisionmaking bodies, the party’s power structure is expected to change.

Meanwhile, for better coordination and preparation for the seven-in-one elections in November, a special committee on the elections was established yesterday, with former DPP secretary-general Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) tapped as convener.