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Taiwan presidency: On your marks
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By Laurence Eyton
TAIPEI
- Taiwan's opposition parties have come out of elections
for the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung on a roll toward
the presidential election in March 2004. Which is
actually rather strange. The elections were, after all,
billed as a "midterm exam" on the performance of the
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) central government.
But in the end the opposition Kuomintang held on to
Taipei as it was expected to do, and the DPP kept
Kaohsiung. Both parties had increased majorities.
Given the tendency in any democracy for midterm
elections, especially for local governments, to go
against the ruling party, add to that the proven
disjunction between voters' behavior at the local and
national levels peculiar to Taiwan, and the "status quo,
but more so" hardly seems the stuff of which opposition
presidential dreams are made.
The opposition
Kuomintang (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) are
interpreting this differently, however. The KMT in
particular is elated by its success in Taipei, where the
incumbent Ma Ying-jeou strolled to victory with a
low-key campaign that delivered him 64 percent of the
vote. It is also happy with its performance in
Kaohsiung, where it saw a shambles of a campaign
nevertheless come within three percentage points of
ousting the DPP. After the hiding dished out to the KMT
in legislative elections last year when it lost some 40
percent of its seats - both to the DPP and the PFP - the
party thinks the tide in its fortunes has turned.
The overall lesson that both parties claim to
have learned from the election is that by running good
candidates and working together, instead of
cannibalizing each others' support, they can win. "Claim
to have" because this is common sense that hardly needed
to be learned. The real question is, can they really
work together?
They think they can, and on
Saturday both party leaders, Lien Chan for the KMT and
James Soong for the PFP, held a news conference in which
they formally committed themselves to running a joint
presidential ticket for 2004.
In theory the DPP
should now be quaking in its shoes. After all, in the
last presidential election in 2000 Lien won 24 percent
of the vote, Soong 36 percent and the current president,
Chen Shui-bian, 39 percent. It is a truism of Taiwan
politics that the DPP has only ever won significant
power - the Taipei mayoralty in 1994, the presidency in
2000 - when the forces against it have been
catastrophically divided.
In practice, however,
the ruling party is looking on with sardonic amusement
while the KMT and PFP play their game of - as in the old
Abbott and Costello routine - "who's on first?"
The DPP's sang froid is by no means a
pose. After all, this is the third time the KMT and PFP
have pledged blood brotherhood in the past two years,
only to find themselves in bloody combat in a matter of
weeks.
There was, for example, an agreement to
work together in the elections for county chiefs in
December 2001, basically choosing candidates jointly
from the cream of their pooled talent with both parties
campaigning for the agreed upon candidate. This never
worked. The two parties could not agree on how to divvy
up the counties between them. The PFP wanted a straight
split of the six counties most likely to be won by the
opposition parties - the so-called "blue camp" - with
each party selecting three candidates. This was
something the KMT simply couldn't do; its electoral
machine depended on its grassroots local organizations -
something the PFP, as a new party only founded in April
2000 has not yet developed - and these had to appeased
by being offered candidacy. They were simply not going
to stand aside to let PFP outsiders pluck spoils they
saw as rightfully theirs. The joint candidature
agreement, therefore, collapsed.
Undaunted by
failure, this year both parties agreed to work together
for the city mayor elections. That the PFP would support
Ma Ying-jeou in Taipei was a given. To remove the bad
taste of the failure of the previous candidacy-sharing
agreement, the KMT appeared prepared to let the PFP run
a candidate in Kaohsiung. At least, the party's central
office was. Once again, the grassroots had different
ideas, refusing to work with the PFP candidate put
forward, the party's vice chairman Chang Chao-hsiung,
and declaring that it would work with nobody apart from
its own favorite Huang Jun-ying, a former KMT deputy
mayor. The KMT actually preferred an independent former
minister of the interior, Chang Po-ya, as did PFP leader
Soong, well aware that his deputy had no real wish to
run.
To resolve these problems the KMT suggested
having a televised debate between the candidates and
then using opinion polls to see whom voters preferred.
The problem with this was that the winner of the poll
was Huang, the candidate no party actually wanted.
Flirtation with the idea of backing Chang Po-ya
anyway provoked uproar in the KMT and the party
reluctantly committed itself to Huang. The PFP on the
other hand flirted with backing the former minister's
candidacy until 10 days before the election, when Soong
decided to throw his party behind Huang.
While,
in the last week of the election, the two parties did
work together on Huang's campaign, the Kaohsiung
election showed not how sensible but how difficult this
proved to be.
Even the significance of Huang's
performance can be debated. The blue camp was pleased
that he came within 25,000 votes of unseating the DPP
incumbent Frank Hsieh. But this was after a campaign of
unparalleled dirtiness on the blue camp's part, with
attempts to tie Hsieh in to a massive developing
kickback scandal resulting in his having to take time
off from his campaign to go to Taipei to clear his name.
The best that can be said for KMT-PFP
cooperation is perhaps that while it has always come
unstuck in the past because of dissent at the local
level over candidacy, at presidential elections this
should not be factor. There are, however, other hurdles
that it is by no means certain that Lien and Soong, in
their three-legged race, will be able to jump together.
The first is the conflict of egos and ambitions
between the two men. Soong is a proven vote-getter and
an able administrator. He should, therefore, lead a
joint presidential ticket.
But that is not how
Lien sees it. Lien has already been vice president -
from 1986 to 2000 - and has no interest whatsoever in
anything except the top job. Lien also has a quite
bewildering lack of understanding of just how terrible a
candidate he is.
An aloof academic from a very
wealthy family, quite lacking the populist touch that
appeals to Taiwanese voters, a stump speech by Lien has
been likened by more than one commentator to a
near-death experience.
After the sheer awfulness
of his campaign for the presidency in 2000, Lien might
have been expected to quit politics forever. Instead he
used the KMT's devotion to seniority to get himself made
party chairman after an intra-party coup to oust former
president Lee Teng-hui, in which post he has performed
miserably, leading the party to a catastrophic loss of
40 percent of its seats in legislative elections last
December. It is hard to think of any politician of
modern times quite as inept as Lien, yet with such
vaunting ambitions.
Lien does have one
advantage, nevertheless, namely lots of money for a
campaign. It has been suggested that he might put the
KMT's huge financial resources behind a KMT candidate
with more vote-pulling power, but this is wishful
thinking. In the past few months the KMT has transferred
large amounts of money to a foundation the sole purpose
of which is to run Lien's presidential campaign. Lien
has also recruited as a putative campaign manager John
Kuan.
Kuan built a formidable track record as a an
election strategist in the late 1980s, nursing the KMT
to a number of surprising successes. The problem is that
to gain these Kuan employed to the full what are
euphemistically called "traditional election methods",
ie, large-scale vote buying.
Quite how the
"prince of vote-buying" is going to work his magic when
the DPP controls the judiciary and Taiwanese have shown
themselves increasingly sick of the practice remains to
be seen. But Kuan's resurrection is a good indicator of
Lien's earnestness.
There are other reasons,
beyond Lien's stubborn vanity, why Soong is going to
lead the presidential ticket, namely that the KMT cannot
award such a plum job to the man whose rebellion against
party discipline caused it to lose the presidency in the
first place.
When Lee Teng-hui put Lien forward
as the presidential candidate to the universal
acclamation of the party - which says far more about
party subservience to the chairman's wishes than it does
about its political smarts - Soong, whose chances of
winning the election were far better, refused to accept
the decision and launched his own presidential campaign
as an independent, for which the KMT expelled him. The
result was the three-cornered race in 2000 and the KMT
losing power. As opportunists in the KMT have deserted
in droves to the PFP, those still loyal to the party
feel bitter toward Soong. This is one prodigal son they
are not going to welcome with open arms.
For
Soong this raises a problem. Lien Chan is a walking
election disaster. Without a superstar running mate he
will be lucky to get more than 16 percent of the vote -
eight percentage points less than last time. President
Chen's government has been a disappointment to many.
Soong only lost by three points last time. So in another
three-cornered race, Soong might actually win.
If he doesn't win his political career is over.
But there is an old joke in Taiwan about a woman who
tragically lost three sons; one joined the army and went
missing in action, another became a sailor and went
missing at sea, the third became vice president.
Becoming Taiwan politics' invisible man is hardly likely
to satisfy a man as ambitious as Soong.
To
attract Soong he needs to be offered real power, with a
future shot at the presidency. The KMT might offer him
the premiership - in Taiwan the premier, not the
president, is the head of the cabinet - perhaps as well
as or instead of the vice presidency. There will be
constitutional problems with Soong doing both jobs. But
taking the premiership will let another possible
presidential contender - Mayor Ma perhaps - into the VP
slot.
This brings the mayor of Taipei into the
picture. His spectacular win, with little help from Lien
and almost none from Soong, has positioned him as an
independent power within the KMT. He is, quite simply,
the only good thing the KMT has going for it
electorally. He is the only KMT politician who could
defeat both Soong and Chen in a three-cornered race.
Ma's loyalties and ambitions are, therefore, a matter of
serious interest. Does Ma have presidential ambitions
himself? He won't say, but he certainly won't deny it.
But at least two groups in the KMT are trying to use Ma
in entirely different ways.
One group wants to
run real primaries in the party to select the
presidential candidate. Polls were, after all, used in
Kaohsiung this autumn. This group also wants Ma to
stand. It is basically a way to pry the presidential
candidacy from Lien's grip, while making only the
smallest of concessions to Soong.
Another group
centered on Lien is trying to use Ma as a bogyman with
which to frighten Soong. Opinion polls - which in Taiwan
are political weapons rather than real surveys of public
opinion - are turning up in the press showing that
Taiwanese prefer Ma in the VP slot on a Lien ticket to
Soong. The idea is that the KMT is prepared to go it
alone without Soong, using Ma's vote-pulling powers if
Soong does not cooperate and take whatever deal the Lien
camp decides to offer him. Of course a Lien-Ma pairing
might not win the election, but it will deny victory to
Soong and end his political career.
The Lien
strategy is therefore quite transparent. The
imponderables are the calculations of ambition,
advantage and loyalty on the part of Soong and Ma. If
Soong takes the VP slot or the premiership, he will be
68 before he can have a crack at the presidency himself
- assuming that Lien does not want second term. This may
limit him to one term. Would that be enough? Especially
when the price of even getting the chance is to do the
real work for the very second-rate and famously lazy
Lien for four years.
Ma on the other hand has an
even more difficult decision. Lien is relying on the
threat of Ma to persuade Soong to compromise. But if he
does, then the presidency, assuming the blue camp can
win and retain it, could be taken up by Lien and Soong
for the 12 years following 2004. Ma is only 52 now, so
he will not be too old for the presidency in 14 years'
time. The problem for him is what on earth would he do
until then? Be Soong's vice president, perhaps. But the
two loathe each other, as the recent Taipei campaign
made abundantly clear.
It is often said that the
Chinese art of negotiation, unlike its Western
counterpart, which proceeds from different positions
through compromise to agreement, begins with an
agreement and then goes on to negotiate what that really
means. Last Saturday's agreement between Lien and Soong
and their respective parties is just such an example. In
the past the two sides have, in the end, never been able
to agree on what their agreement to cooperate really
meant. There are a raft of reasons, both personal and
political, why such agreement might elude them again.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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