People First Party

The People First Party (親民黨 Pinyin: Qin1 Min2 Dang3, literal meaning: "Close-to-People Party" with Qin1 Min2 being a phrase with Confucian connotations) is a political party in the Republic of China on Taiwan. It was founded by James Soong and his supporters after his failed independent bid for the presidency in 2000. Soong is currently the chairman and dominates much of its politics.

The party maintains a close but tense relationship with the Kuomintang as part of the pan-blue coalition. After the expulsion of Lee Teng-hui in 2001, the Kuomintang began espousing policies more closely associated with Chinese reunification and thus the KMT and the PFP are competing for the same set of voters. However, the electoral dynamics of Taiwan are such so that if both parties run strong campaigns, the vote is split and the pan-green coalition wins. This dynamic in which both the KMT and PFP must simulataneously compete and cooperate with each other has led to complex and interesting politics.

In several notable cases, this has led to situations in which both parties have run candidates, but close to the election the party with the less popular candidate unofficially drops out of the race. This in turn has led to some notable situations when either the PFP or the KMT is campaigning against its own candidate, which has led to intra-party resentment.

To avoid a repeat of this effect, which led to the election of Democratic Progressive Party candidate Chen Shui-bian to the presidency, Chairman Soong has agree to run as vice-president on KMT Chairman Lien Chan's presidential ticket in 2004.

There are five departments in the headquarters:

Policy Research Center (政策研究中心 zhen4-ce4 yian2-jiu4 zhong1-xin1),
Organizational Department (組織部 zu3-zhi1 bu4),
Public Relation Department (文宣部 wen2-xuan1 bu4),
Executive Department (行政部 xing2-zheng4 bu4), and
Treasury Department (財務部 cai2-wu4 bu4)

External link

People First Party official web site (http://www.pfp.org.tw/)