Two DPP founding members expelled by party

The opposition party took the severest possible disciplinary action against Hsu, a retired lawmaker, and Fan, a former chairman of the Council of Agriculture, four days after it had their membership suspended for three years for attending an economic forum in China.

Knowing he would be expelled, Fan renounced his membership prior to the party's central consultative council meeting to hear his case.

He told a press conference early in the morning that he resigned from the party but asked the consultative council to spare Hsu.

"I sincerely urged that she not be expelled," said Fan, who also served as magistrate of Hsinchu.

Hsu did not appear before the council to plea for her case. She said she would leave for Hong Kong on business.

The council met at 2 p.m. Only six of the 11 council members attended. Ten members were present at Thursday's meeting, where the decision to suspend Hsu and Fang was taken.

Chen Chin-teh, council chairman, said the decision to expel the two heavyweights was unanimous.

He said the expulsion is the only action his council could take after Hsu and Fan refused to accept the suspension decision, failed to apologize as required, and continued to make statements detrimental to the party.

In particular, Chen said, Fan had to be stripped of membership, though he said he had given it up. "His resignation," the council chairman said, "did not affect our decision to expel him."

The two heavyweights went to Changsha to attend the forum sponsored by the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. They had been warned against the visit before they made it. The meeting took place June 11-12.

The pro-independence opposition party forbids its members to visit China unless previously approved. There was an exception made for Chen Chu, mayor of Kaohsiung, who visited Beijing and Shanghai to promote the World Games without approval from the party's central office.

Kaohsiung hosted the Games, which closed Sunday. No disciplinary action has been taken against the mayor of the southern Taiwan port city.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos Respond to this email