I’m not a Monday morning quarterback.But I would like to comment on the Democratic Progressive Party’s election fiasco on Saturday.
In this column a week ago, I all but predicted the Kuomintang would win a two-thirds majority in the seventh Legislative Yuan. Well, that was born out, and as a matter of fact, the opposition party did much better than everybody had expected.It holds 81 of the 113 seats in the new legislature, controlling a virtual three-fourths majority against the ruling party’s 27, which is one short of a quarter.The holders of the remaining five are expected to vote with the Kuomintang in the parliament scheduled to convene on February 1.
Why the rout?The Kuomintang did not defeat the ruling party.President Chen defeated his own party.
Chen convinced himself of his invincibility after his come-from-behind victory in the presidential election of 2004.His administration – strictly speaking, it’s not his administration, for the Constitution says he is the head of state but not the head of government – can show a very poor track record at best.Worse still, his government is not just inept but corrupt as well.He himself is an unindicted co-defendant in a corruption case involving his wife, who is standing trial for embezzlement in connection with his use of a public fund for the conduct of “affairs of state.”He survived three recall motions, thanks to the unanimous support of his party’s lawmakers.He succeeded in staring down Shih Ming-teh, his one-time friend who led a March of One Million in the fall of 2006 to topple him.He then successfully campaigned for Chen Chu, who was elected mayor of Kaohsiung with a razor-thin margin of a little more than 1,000 votes at the end of that year.
Naturally, President Chen believed he could help his party win the legislative elections, which were scheduled at first to take place in early December last year.He doubled as chairman of the party to succeed Yu Shyi-kun, who, on indictment for graft, had to quit.The new party chairman took command of the campaign for the parliamentary as well as presidential elections.He had the parliamentary elections deferred and a referendum called alongside them to boost turnout, which he thought would help his party win at least 50 seats in the nation’s highest legislative organ.
Another tactic Chen applied was to demonize President Chiang Kai-shek in his all-out de-Sinicization campaign and call a referendum on Taiwan’s admission to the United Nations under the name Taiwan.It backfired.The way he handled the demonization of Chiang and the UN referendum further alienated swing voters, who had no alternative but to go to the polls to protest or stay at home.In particular, they all knew Chen’s UN bid is a dangerous game.His insistence on the referendum to take place at the same time with the presidential election on March 22 plunged relations between Taiwan and the United States to a record low, while China considers it a move toward de jure independence that may trigger a preemptive invasion codified in Beijing’s anti-secession law.
Their reaction was clearly reflected on the outcome of Saturday’s elections.Turnout hit an all-time 58.5 percent low and the ruling party garnered close to 37 percent of all the votes cast.That meant the party kept all its hardcore voter support and swing voters either stayed away or voted for the Kuomintang or small parties, none of them crossing the threshold of 5 percent to get lawmakers at large elected.
President Chen quit his concurrent job as chairman of the party to take responsibility for its first and worst loss in legislative elections.Frank Hsieh, the party’s standard bearer, is expected to take over as acting chairman.He is facing a tremendous task of reconsolidating the power base of the party in a mere two months to beat his Kuomintang rival Ma Ying-jeou.It looks like a mission impossible, but Hsieh is confident that he can cope with the challenge.
Hsieh knows the hardcore supporters of the Kuomintang never account for more than 40 percent of the electorate.The pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union has support of at least 3 to 4 percent of all the eligible voters.With that support added, Hsieh commands a power base equal to that of his Kuomintang adversary, who disenchanted his natural ally New Party by sponsoring a referendum for Taiwan’s return to the United Nations under the name of the Republic of China.The New Party, which polled 4 percent of the votes on Saturday, may not unconditionally support Ma for president.
On the other hand, Hsieh can bet on a pendulum effect.Support for the ruling party hit the bottom, and the time comes for bottoming out.Come next election time, voters tend to favor the party that loses a previous election to swing back the pendulum. That is one way to balance one major party against the other.Voters who fear the Kuomintang’s overwhelming domination of parliament may swing the presidential election in favor of the ruling party.
The time has yet to come for Hsieh to play his last card.It will be in the last stretch of the race when he will make an urgent emotional call to native-born islander voters for voting for anybody but a Chinese mainlander, who Ma is.The islanders outnumber the mainlanders four to one in Taiwan.Older islanders who experienced the bloody February 28 Incident of 1947 would rise at Hsieh’s call to rally behind him.He still has a chance to edge Ma out.
Ma knows his lead over Hsieh in the forthcoming race is not solid.The landslide election victory the Kuomintang owed to his earnest campaigning certainly has increased his odds against Hsieh, who, however, is waiting until the sixty-first anniversary of the incident, in which tens of thousands of innocent islanders were massacred, to show his hand.Although the Supreme Court may not hurt Ma with a conviction of corruption for misusing his expense account while he was mayor of Taipei from 1998 to 2006, he cannot afford to take the election in his stride after Hsieh’s last trump is played to no or little avail.
（本文刊載於97.01.14 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
