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Taiwan's pan-blues sing the
blues
By Laurence Eyton
TAIPEI
- The prospects for Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian
in his re-election battle are looking up - thanks to the
opposition, which appears to be snatching defeat from
the jaws of victory.
When Taiwan's two main
opposition parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the People
First Party (PFP) - together known as the pan-blues -
decided last spring to field a joint presidential
ticket, it looked as if Chen was beaten before he
started.
Certainly the triumphalist tone of the
parties themselves and their supporters in the media
suggested as much. Since then the parties' strategic
miscalculations, their bizarre policy flip-flops, and
lack of openness about skeletons in their closets mean
they now must confront the very real possibility of
defeat.
And the campaigning for the polls March
20 has turned very unpleasant. A KMT television spot
asks: "Like it? Then Daddy will buy it for you." A
dueling riposte from Chen's Democratic Progressive Party
(DPP): "Like it? Then Daddy will steal it for you."
Originally the KMT and PFP thought they could
win at the polls on March 20 by arithmetic alone. In the
last election in 2000, the KMT's Lien Chan took 24
percent of the vote. James Soong, now chairman of the
PFP but running at the time as an independent, won 36
percent. He had split from the KMT in a fit of pique at
having been denied the candidacy that went to Lien.
Chen, the nominee of the DPP, himself won the
election with a mere 39 percent of the vote on this
island of 21.5 million people. Once the two opposition
groups had stopped rancorously blaming each other for
splitting the vote - their unity would have kept Chen
out of power - it became natural to paper over past
differences long enough for Lien and Soong to take the
stage together.
This was not easy. Even now
there are many in the PFP who resent the fact that the
bigger vote-getter of the two, Soong, is to be only the
vice-presidential running mate, and if elected hold the
relatively powerless office. Still, observers have long
speculated on a deal to give Soong the premiership as
well. Some Lien supporters, on the other hand, see Soong
as a traitor to the KMT - in which he rose to be
secretary general - and deeply resent his perceived
party-switching treachery rewarded when the KMT could
field other rump candidates.
But adding 24
percent and 36 percent equaled power, and both parties
muzzled their dissidents in order to bring about a
Lien-Soong ticket. Since then it has been all downhill.
Long-term observers of Taiwanese politics are
always surprised and intrigued by the degree to which
the opposition camp - known colloquially as the
"pan-blue alliance" after the color of the KMT emblem -
believes its own propaganda. Partly, this is because of
pan-blue domination of media and the media's long
submissiveness in the years of the martial-law regime,
under which most current senior journalists learned
their trade. As a result, the pan-blues get favorable
but often inaccurate media coverage, which they tend to
believe.
Pan-blues bask in arithmetic, forget
realities
The governing DPP in general receives
very hostile coverage that, unfair as it is, keeps the
party aware of the pitfalls, possible and actual, of its
policies. As Taiwan's media applauded the brokering of
the alliance and the joint presidential ticket, the
pan-blues basked in their arithmetic and forgot about
some of the harsher political realities.
For
example, Lien Chan was the KMT candidate at a time when
former president Lee Teng-hui was still leader of the
party and in theory had put his imprimatur upon Lien's
candidacy in March 2000 voting. Lien, after his election
defeat, contrived to blame his failure on Lee and oust
him in a leadership coup - considered an astonishing and
successful piece of insolence so soon after his
humiliating repudiation by voters. This maneuver also
explains why the man who lost the last election can
still lead the KMT into the next one.
Concerning
Lien's 24 percent of the vote, perhaps as many as half
the voters chose Lien because they believed Lee Teng-hui
supported him. Now Lee has broken with his old party
completely, and is telling his supporters to vote for
Chen.
Now 36 percent plus 12 percent (removing
the Lee loyalists from the original sum), when compared
with Chen's 39 percent plus 12 percent Lee loyalists,
does not look anything like the walkover that had been
predicted last spring. In fact it looks like what it is,
a neck-and-neck race.
At the time the alliance
was formed last spring, the pan-blues also miscalculated
badly as to what the election was going to be about.
They thought they would win on the basis of the
miserable performance of the economy. Taiwan has seen
three lean years, and the pan-blues had sought to
position themselves as the authors of Taiwan's
prosperity from the 1970s to the end of the century.
They believed that their theme - "only we can bring the
good times back" - was a sure winner. What they did not
allow for was the sophistication and knowledge of
ordinary Taiwanese.
For the first two years of
Chen's government, as the economy floundered and 2001
actually saw negative growth for the first time in three
decades, the DPP was overwhelmed with criticism. But
2002 saw a return to growth, and growth in 2003 is
expected to have been a respectable 5 percent. With
export orders at record highs in the third and fourth
quarters, the economy seems to have turned the corner.
Public links economic problems to US
recession
Public opinion, however, has also
changed, with a growing understanding that Taiwan's
economic problems have had much to do with recession in
the United States, especially in the
information-technology (IT) sector after the dotcom
bubble burst. Taiwanese also understand that the
island's over-reliance on IT products and the US market
was a creation of the previous KMT government in the
1990s.
The pan-blues also blundered in getting
far too close to China. Smarting after the 2000 election
loss, it might have seemed a smart strategy to persuade
Beijing to ignore Chen, though given Chen's support for
Taiwanese independence as a firebrand legislator in the
early 1990s, he was hardly likely to be embraced. The
strategy was simple: to freeze out Chen, showing he was
not someone who could ever reach accommodation with
China, and to deal with the pro-reunification pan-blues
when Chen's failed policy resulted in his ejection from
office by the voters.
The problem is that visits
to China by KMT and PFP apparatchiks and legislators
have been so frequent in the past three years that now
voters are genuinely suspicious of their motives.
Speculation is rife about striking a secret deal and
"selling out Taiwan". The two allied naturally parties
denied this, but the DPP's supporters managed to throw
enough mud for some of it to stick, before the pan-blues
realized quite how big an electoral liability their
Beijing welcome might prove.
In addition to
these basic pan-blue miscalculations about positioning
and key issues, there appears to be an accelerating
meltdown in pan-blue core ideology. The most spectacular
instance of this was the parties' about-face from their
traditional vigorous opposition to the highly
controversial referendum law to actually forcing the
legislation through parliament in November. The law
allows Taiwan to hold referenda for the first time, and
Chen is using a provision of the new law to ask voters
whether they want China to redirect hundreds of missiles
currently aimed at the island Beijing considers a
renegade province.
But this is only the most
extravagant example among a raft of issues that were
once thought central to the pan-blue platform and now,
as the campaign gathers steam, have been jettisoned.
Adding to the pan-blues' woes, their substitute position
on the referendum law seems to be no different from that
of the rival governing DPP. As a result they have been
derided, labeled ideological bankrupts who have long
clung to vote-losing policies that they are now trying
to replace by borrowing the DPP's more attractive
agenda. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,"
as one newspaper editorial mischievously pointed out.
First the pan-blues embraced constitutional
change - something they had previously said was
unnecessary - until the DPP seemed to be making headway
with a design for an entirely new constitution. Then
they tried to distance themselves from their pro-China
reputation - and those "selling out Taiwan" rumors - by
apparently abandoning their traditional staunch stand
for reunification.
Flip-flop on reunification
a stunner
Their flip-flop on reunification is
still resounding. Initially the pan-blues had vigorously
condemned Chen's remark in 2002 that Taiwan and China
were two different countries, "one on each side" of the
Taiwan Strait. They repeatedly demanded that Taiwan
embrace the "one China" principle - slippery and
dangerous to Taiwan as that concept might be, given
Beijing's multiple definitions of terms.
In late
December, however, the campaign manager for Lien Chan
reported that the KMT presidential candidate now has
decided that "one country on each side" of the Strait is
an acceptable definition of reality and that Taiwan
independence cannot be ruled out in the future.
This was partially denied by other party
apparatchiks in different ways, and one newspaper
counted no less than five definitions of Taiwan-China
relations circulating in the pan-blue campaign. All of
which appears like opportunism mixed with incompetence,
compounded by a failure of imagination, according to
local observers.
But it isn't just that the
pan-blues that have been making blunders. They also have
a number of weak points that are virtually indefensible
and that the governing DPP assailed last month in
attacks that are likely to draw blood.
A prime
topic is the KMT's vast wealth and how it was acquired.
Most people in Taiwan, even pan-blue supporters, believe
that much of it was acquired less than honestly. After
all, the Chiang Kai-shek family, which ruled Taiwan for
nearly 40 years, were notorious kleptomaniacs, as more
than one US president is on the record as saying. And
the Chiang family ethics, or lack thereof, were emulated
by their functionaries. The greed was compounded by a
Leninist-style regime with no rule of law, and in which
the government and ruling party were one and the same.
Given this history, it is no surprise that that
the KMT - according to some Taiwanese estimates - is
worth US$20 billion. The only surprise is that it has
been allowed to hang on to its wealth - so
far.
Criticism of KMT wealth
resonates
The KMT retains its assets in part
because the DPP simply lacks the strength in the
legislature to force through necessary reform laws. It
is tempting, however, to see the KMT's wealth as an
issue the DPP deliberately neglected over the last three
years in order to bring it up now as a campaign issue.
The pitch to the voters amounts to accusing the KMT of
theft of staggering sums and then asking whether the
people really want to let these kleptocrats back into
office. And it is resonating.
Further, allies
Lien and Soong both have found themselves facing tough
questions about their honesty. Soong was damaged in the
last election by accusations that he stole some NT$240
billion (US$7.1 billion) from the KMT during his time as
secretary general in the early 1990s, siphoning off the
money into accounts in the names of his family members.
Despite overwhelming evidence to support the
charge and inadequate explanations by Soong, prosecutors
declined to pursue the matter in 2002, despite the KMT's
lawyers' insistence that there was a case to answer. The
investigation, however, was reopened last year, and it
would not be surprising to see a flurry of activity as
election day nears. The investigation is being held up
partly because Soong's sister-in-law Chen Pi-yun - he
claims she was acting as his financial adviser - refuses
to return to Taiwan from Hawaii and face questioning by
investigating prosecutors.
Lien, the PFP's
presidential candidate, is also facing problems about
alleged ill-gotten gains. In this case no one suggests
that Lien personally has lined his own pockets - the
question concerns his family's wealth. Questions have
been raised, and a book recently published, about how
Lien's father could come to Taiwan without a penny in
1949, and how he and his son spent their lives in public
service - and yet Lien's family has amassed NT$20
billion of assets. The answer according to the new book
is the illegal acquisition of farmland followed by the
use of political access to get it rezoned into hugely
more profitable commercial land - a common scam in
Taiwan among the politically well-connected and one that
the KMT used to repay the mafia-type gangs that arranged
its vote-buying, according to critics.
Both the
KMT and Lien dispute the accusations against his family.
Lien says his worth is only NT$1.3 billion. The DPP's
riposte is that this is forgetful accounting that
neglects to mention the companies and trusts held in the
name of other family members. The KMT has both sued the
DPP for defamation and accused President Chen of
financial shenanigans himself - and this has prompted a
counter-suit from Chen's wife.
The problem for
the pan-blues here is that everyone, except Soong's most
ardent supporters, believes that at the very least he
has not been candid about how the KMT's cash found its
way into his family bank accounts. The fact that he
didn't return the money when he quit the party in 1999
suggests that he wasn't managing a secret party fund, as
he has claimed.
'Like it? Daddy will buy - or
steal it - for you'
In Lien's case, the problem
is that everybody believes him to be enormously wealthy.
Even his friends candidly estimate his wealth to be
about five to seven times the amount he has claimed
(NT20 billion), estimates that have been published in an
authorized biography. Lien's denials will not change
many minds in Taiwan but will simply seem like the kind
of evasion about ill-gotten gains that is so readily
associated with the KMT. And he cannot admit to having
enormous wealth without facing more questions about
where it came from.
It is indicative of the way
the campaign is going that the KMT launched a TV spot
commenting on the first couple's wealth - Chen was one
of Taiwan's most highly paid lawyers before taking up
politics - and how they could not appreciate the tough
financial plight of the ordinary Taiwanese. The theme:
"Do you like it? Then daddy will buy it for you."
Then the DPP responded with its own, far more
hard-hitting version aimed at Lien and Soong: "Do you
like it? Then Daddy will steal it for you."
With
little choice between the policies of the two sides, the
issue of trust is one that can make a difference - and
it appears to be one on which the pan-blues can only
lose.
All of which is not to suggest that the
DPP has the election in the bag. It cannot rely entirely
on the pan-blues' blunders and the dubious honesty of
their candidates. And Chen Shui-bian's use of the new
referendum to call a vote on China's missile deployments
- referendum as a vote of censure - could still blow up
in his face.
But given that the pan-blues
appeared to have a 20-percentage-point lead over the DPP
last February and that the latest polls now show the
pan-blues and President Chen level-pegging, the auguries
for the alliance are not good.
(Copyright 2004
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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