Given that the Democratic Prog-ressive Party's (DPP) candidate for the Taipei County commissioner position, Luo Wen-jia's (羅文嘉) "new DPP movement" is gaining ground, judging by Luo's rising popularity, the party has to face the scenario that the movement will not only be a campaign topic but also a real issue for it in the next phase of political reform, political analysts said.

Luo's "new DPP movement," which aims to rejuvenate the party's founding spirit and revitalize its core values of freedom, democracy, justice and integrity, has caused ripples in the DPP and elicited responses for and against the movement.

People opposed to the idea have called Luo a self-seeking politician who just wanted to boost his own election momentum, while supporters said it was a timely mechanism to scrutinize the maladies propgated over the past six years.

DPP Legislator Lee Wen-chung (李文忠) has launched a signature drive to solicit support for the campaign and about 70 lawmakers have endorsed Luo's reform proposal.

According to the internal poll conducted by Luo's campaign team, support for him apparently increased after the new DPP movement was proposed. Nonetheless, his top campaign strategist was not willing to make any rash connections by saying that it was all because of the new discourse.

"It is true that Luo's support went up significantly," acting Taipei County Commissioner Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀) said on Friday.

"But we still wonder if it is because of Luo's wide exposure in the mass media or because of his new proposal. This needs to be observed for a while," he said.

Lin is Luo's campaign manager and is in charge of Luo's campaign schedule.

Seeing that Luo's election prospects are on the rise, DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) -- who has been dodging commenting on the new DPP proposal and has displayed an ambiguous attitude towards the discourse for about a week -- finally responded to the matter in an approving and supportive manner.

Su promised to conduct reforms in the DPP at a rally celebrating the establishment of Luo's campaign headquarters on Saturday.

"As far as I know, as far as the DPP is concerned, whether other candidates should follow Luo's new DPP movement and take up the idea as part of their campaign platforms is still under eval-uation," Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), a political analyst and a research fellow at Academia Sinica, said yesterday.

At present, several DPP candidates who are competing against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) nominees still need more solid elements to their campaigns -- including Taichung City mayoral candidate Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), Taichung County commissioner candidate Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) and Nantou County commissioner candidate Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯), who are considering whether to follow suit or not.

"If the new DPP movement dominates the campaign and turns out to be an effective strategy, then this new political discourse will have much more influence than the original proposers expected and the DPP will have to deal with the discourse in a serious manner," Hsu said.

Although many people have spurned the new movement as nothing but a campaign gimmick, political commentator Yang Hsien-hung (楊憲宏) thinks of it as a typical model of the DPP's development, which is "progress, conflict and compromise."

"This is how the DPP grew up -- it thrives on the process of learning by trial and error," Yang said.

"Maybe Luo's proposal is like the flutter of a butterfly's wing, which might cause a most unexpected outcome that none could foresee," he said.

Given that integrity is the key element of this movement, Hsu said, the presidential candidates in 2008 will have to take up handling this problem, which will not be an easy task.

In this regard, Luo's opponent, the KMT candidate for Taipei County commissioner, Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), has focused on attacking President Chen Shu-bian (陳水扁) on the issue of official integrity and has been bugging Luo to say who the target is that has be reformed -- given that Luo has been a long-time Chen supporter, going back to when Chen was Taipei City mayor.

"Therefore, Chen's reaction to the new DPP movement and his handling of Chou's aggression will become a significant factor determining the election result," Hsu said.

And if Luo wins the year-end election, the outcome also means that the Student Movement Generation can become the successors to the "Lawyer Generation" or "Kaohsiung Incident Generation," which referred to Chen, Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and Su.

Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒), a professor in Tamkang University's department of public administration, agreed with Hsu's points but doubted the DPP's resolve to see through reform.

"What people expect from the DPP will not only be that it replaces the KMT's rule," Shih said.

"People want to see the concrete contents of the reforms and their [DPP's] honest reflection upon mistakes and correcting them," he said.

"Otherwise, nothing can save the DPP from decay no matter how many new movements are launched," Shih said.