The spot for KMT chairman is up for grabs in 2017. Each candidate is required to gather enough petitions from party members to be eligible. Together, the six candidates gathered 240 thousand more signatures than all registered KMT members.
Regarding the on-going pension reform, most KMT candidates criticized the current government while offers no solution forward. There is one candidate that deviated from the norm of insanity.
Steve Chan (Zhan Qixian 詹啟賢), who was also a physician, was one of KMT’s vice-chairmen in 2016. He resigned from that post after disputes with chairman Hong Hsiu-zhu over how to handle party assets. Chan declared that he would run for the post weeks later.
Chan made a statement this past week saying the KMT had the chance to fix the pension issue during Ma’s administration but missed the opportunity. Chan also said the KMT should propose their own version of pension reform if it wants to remain a serious party. “KMT shouldn’t be a party of inaction”, said Chan.
Chan feels by now there’s no point to place blames. It is a serious issue that needs to be resolved, it’s only a matter of how it should be resolved.
Chan’s foray into politics is an interesting one. Chan came from a big central Taiwan family. More than 20 or so became physicians. Many of them ran for local office. His uncle Chen Rui-tang (陳端堂) and Chen’s daughter in law Zhang Wen-ying (張溫鷹) were once mayor of Taichung city. Interestingly, Chen ran for the KMT, and Zhang ran for the DPP. Given that family background, Chan’s position is a lot less partisan.
Prior to 1989, Chan was a physician in Los Angeles before returning to Taiwan. By 1997, Chan was named the Minister of Health and Welfare. He was Then appointed by president Chen Sui-bian as the consultant to the president back in 2000. He later return to the Chimei hospital as the director. In 2004, CSB was shot on the campaign trail and was rushed to the Chimei hospital. Chan inspected the gun wound and came under immense attack from the KMT, claiming that Chimei helped fabricate the gun shot.
He was invited by Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) to be Ma Ying-jeou’s campaign manager. Since then he became an important figure within the KMT, culminating in Hong Hsiu-zhu appointing him to the position of vice-chairman. However, after Hong refused to sign a resolution proposed by Chan to resolve the party asset issue, the rift between Chan and Hong became apparent. In the end, Chan decided to run against Hong.