TAIPEI - Incompetent in campaigning, reputedly steeped in corruption and
ideologically bankrupt - that's how the opposition "pan-blue alliance" appears
in Taiwan's March 20 presidential election. So, based on this evidence, the
re-election of the Democratic Progressive Party's Chen Shui-bian to the
presidency should be a shoo-in, shouldn't it?
Actually, no. It is almost impossible to obtain reliable polling data in
Taiwan, since everybody who conducts polls also has a partisan ax to grind. In
fact, the consensus is that the two sides - the pan-blues, comprising the
Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP),
a KMT splinter group, and the ruling pan-green alliance of the Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) - are so close that the result is anybody's guess.
Illegal bookmakers are giving the shortest odds for an opposition victory by a
margin of about 500,000 votes - though even this might be an attempt to
influence the election in favor of the bookies' preferred candidate.
Nevertheless, nobody should be surprised at a DPP defeat being announced on the
evening of March 20. And this raises a question: Why, in spite of the
pan-blues' manifest drawbacks, might they still win?
The short answer is that Taiwan has a number of constituencies among which
competence on the campaign trail, honesty in government, and vision simply do
not count for much. It's worth remembering that the opposition, in its former
guise as a unified KMT, ruled Taiwan for half a century after its flight from
China in the wake of defeat by Mao Zedong's communists. During this time it
successfully created a system of patron-client politics, which now results in
its being able to rely on a surprisingly large number of "iron votes". Through
the education system, it also imposed a system of ideological control on
Taiwanese that a decade of democracy and four years of non-KMT government has
done little to loosen. And of course, some of its policies simply appeal to the
naked self-interest of useful voter groups.
Here's a rundown of just who is likely to vote for the pan-blues. Of the nearly
12 million votes up for grabs, if the pan-blues are going to win, they need to
garner more than half the votes. So where are they going to get at least 6
million of these?
The ethnic vote
About 15 percent of Taiwan's population is made up of mainlanders - those who
fled to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek and their descendants. This is a group that
used to enjoy a monopoly on political power, but democratization has seen its
relative importance erode, while the excesses committed by the Chiang
government, most notoriously the February 28 massacres in 1947, and the
thuggery of three decades of "White Terror" have been laid at this group's door
by others in Taiwan.
The Taiwan independence movement, with which the DPP is closely associated, has
used past grievances against mainlanders to forge a sense of Taiwanese
identity, but this has allowed the pan-blues to play on the mainlander
minority's sense of vulnerability and its fears of Taiwanese nationalism,
presenting themselves as being the only possible safeguard of mainlander
interests. In such an environment it is interesting to note that while
mainlanders are usually in favor of unification with China, this does not mean
they are partisans in any way of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Rather,
they see Taiwan's membership to a "big China" as a way of protecting themselves
given their own minority status in what they see as an increasingly
chauvinistic Taiwan.
Less well known than the mainlander-Taiwanese split is the split among the
Taiwanese themselves. The word "Taiwanese" in fact is rather misleading in its
common application because at times it is used to mean "non-mainlander", while
in other instances it refers to one of Taiwan's principal ethnic groups prior
to 1945, when the island was freed from Japanese control.
The non-mainlanders of ethnic-Chinese origin are split between the Hokkien, or
Hoklo-speaking immigrants, and the Hakka. The Hakka probably account for
another 15 percent of Taiwan's population, and their relations with the Hoklo
have always been fraught: communal fighting over land ownership was endemic
between the two groups until the Japanese takeover of Taiwan in 1895. To this
day the two communities remain wary of each other, and during its 50 years in
power, the KMT operated a canny divide-and-rule policy in relation to the
groups.
The Hakka have traditionally taken little interest in Taiwan independence.
Therefore, it is no accident that a large number of non-mainlander KMT
officials are of Hakka origin; in the 1960s and 1970s, when the party realized
it needed new blood, it recruited among the Hakka, who were seen as more
politically reliable because of their lacking interest in independence, a
scenario that would leave them at the mercy of their Hoklo rivals. However, in
its early years the DPP often appeared to be a party of chauvinistic Hoklo
nationalism, so minority fears, such as those of the Hakka and the mainlanders,
are not without foundation, nor are they manufactured by the pan-blues.
The result of both KMT policy and DPP shortsightedness is that those areas
where Hakka predominate, especially Chungli and Miaoli counties, were until
very recently solid pan-blue vote banks. While the DPP has tried in the past
four years to woo the Hakka - setting up a cabinet-level Council of Hakka
Affairs, sponsoring Hakka cultural festivals, allowing the Hakka language to be
taught in schools, and starting Hakka TV broadcasting - how much this
election-related effort has won over the clannish and skeptical Hakka
communities remains to be seen.
And then there are the aborigines, Taiwan's principal pre-1945 non-Han ethnic
group. And though there aren't many of them - they comprise about 2 percent of
the population - they tend to be solid KMT voters. This is partly because they
too are a minority fearful of Hoklo chauvinism, and their history gives them
ample reason to be. It is also partly because the bitterly impoverished
aboriginal communities are the kinds of places where KMT patron-client politics
are most in their element. While the central government may have been in DPP
hands over the last four years, the local governments of areas where many
aboriginals reside, and the basic source of funding to community leader
"patrons" have remained in the pan-blue camp, and clientism has been largely
unaffected.
The pan-blues could expect to pull in 3.5 million votes from the ethnic vote
alone.
The patron-client relationship vote
Through the KMT's extensive local organizations, the pan-blues have a lock hold
on the rural community, especially in regard to farmers and fishermen. Most
farmers and fisherman rely on credit for their local credit institutions, the
boards of which are dominated by the pan-blues. This credit is often provided
against inadequate collateral or even a lack of one at all - part of a network
of favors, rewards and obligations operating at the village level. Much the
same goes for the organizations the farmers use to get their produce to market
and the immensely powerful irrigation organizations that, as their name
suggests, supply water to agriculturalists. Basically, all farmers exist within
a network of obligations dominated by the pan-blues, and because there are
officially about 700,000 farming families, this suggests that the pan-blues
could pull in well over a million firm farming votes.
It's also worth looking at those who work in state-owned industries, which in
Taiwan have the problems of their peers the world over, namely inefficiency and
overmanning. In Taiwan this is also complicated by the fact that workers in
state-owned industries often count as civil servants under employment laws, and
therefore cannot be dismissed under virtually any circumstances. Most workers
see absolutely no advantage in having their agencies first corporatized, then
privatized, subjecting them to the harshness of market forces and causing them
to swap their "iron" rice bowl for a more fragile variety. The Taiwan power
company, the railway administration and the state telecom company all have
noisy anti-privatization unions with heavy pan-blue involvement. And while the
DPP is committed to the privatization of as much of the state-owned sector as
it can sell off, the pan-blues are far less enthusiastic about privatization
and market forces. So could this add up to possible votes? Maybe half a
million.
The business vote
Part of the pan-blue campaign strategy is to stress that if they win office,
Taiwan will move ahead quickly on opening up direct transportation, commercial
and communication links with China. Actually, the governing DPP wishes to open
direct links as well; however, it simply will not pay the price that China
wants before it comes to the bargaining table - an acknowledgment that there is
only one China of which Taiwan is part.
How the pan-blues intend to avoid this situation is not quite clear; they
merely claim that they have a better relationship with Beijing than the DPP
because they are not opposed to unification with China. As a result, they tend
to think that China might be more willing to relax its hitherto intransigent
demands for them in a way that it would not do for the DPP.
Whether or not this is true, the pan-blues think of themselves as the natural
choice of Taiwanese doing business in China, where they have been campaigning
hard among the Taiwan business community. Many Taiwanese businessmen say
President Chen Shui-bian is not actively protecting their mainland Chinese
investments, and as a result, the business community largely is supporting the
pan-blue opposition ticket in order to safeguard their mainland economic
interests.
The pan-blues themselves say this could mean a million votes, and if so, it
would be decisive. But this goal may be something of a pipe dream. Evidence
from the last presidential election suggests that while there might have been
700,000 Taiwanese doing business in China at the time, only 20,000 or so
bothered to return to the island to vote.
But putting those businessmen with interests in China aside, there is also a
large group of domestic Taiwanese businessmen as well as ordinary people who
believe that the pan-blues are better economic managers. One thing the KMT can
point to is that, whatever its unpalatable record on human and political
rights, it built the prosperous Taiwan of today, and as such, many people think
the pan-blues understand how to bring about prosperity, whereas the DPP
doesn't.
The youth vote
Given that the pan-blue candidates are a generation older than the DPP's
President Chen, few have expected the pan-blues to be able to make inroads
among this voting segment. After all, the 68-year-old Lien Chan of the KMT and
his running mate, the PFP's James Soong, who is 62, have been active in Taiwan
politics since the early 1980s, and both have been referred to as "yesterday's
men". So what's their attraction? Well, of the 1.5 million people voting for
the first time in this presidential election, at least half are males, and for
them, a very real appeal comes through in the pan-blue offer to reduce the
period of compulsory military service from the current 20 months a mere three.
Given that Taiwan's armed forces are largely conscript-based, this would mean a
change so radical that it is hard to see how it might be implemented in a time
period that gave any advantage to those now facing the draft. But the
practicalities - perhaps one might say the likelihood - of the pan-blues
keeping their election promise is anything but a deterrent to young Taiwanese
males eager to get out of their widely loathed military obligations.
Another factor affecting young voters, especially those in college, is that
their teachers, a disproportionate number of whom are mainlanders and many of
whom entered the teaching profession in the days of martial law, when political
reliability was at least as important as pedagogic skills, tell them they
should vote for the pan-blues. And Taiwanese youths, being some of the world's
least rebellious, tend to do what they are told.
The 'others' vote
Of course, these non-rebellious young voters could turn into non-rebellious old
voters. The pan-blues benefit from an educational system that has been in place
for in Taiwan for 50 years. The pan-blues have used this system to indoctrinate
people with the idea that the KMT is the "natural" party of the government in
Taiwan, and many people still believe this.
Others also include the unemployed. Unemployment currently is running at 4.7
percent of the workforce. That Taiwan's most severe recession in half a century
coincided with the DPP's assumption of power in 2000 is largely a coincidence;
the economic downturn was the consequence of the recession in the United
States, not DPP incompetence. Nevertheless, the pan-blues have gained some
mileage in persuading the unemployed, stating that the DPP hasn't done enough
to support them while they are out of work and lacks the economic skill to get
them back to work. The number of possible votes this sector could bring: just
less than half a million.
Still others have simply had enough with DPP policy. There are those who are
genuinely intimidated by China's threats and see the DPP's policies as
exacerbating this, while others are fed up with gridlock between the
pan-blue-controlled legislature and the government - the best way in which to
end which, they think, is to return the pan-blues to the presidential office.
Furthermore, some Hoklo are put off by the suggestion that Hoklo chauvinism is
always lurking at the DPP's fringes. How many fall into these categories? It's
anybody's guess.
Adding up the numbers
Put them all together and it appears that the pan-blues, for all their
demerits, should have about 6 million votes in the bag. Though the likelihood
that the pan-blue coalition may actually pull in all of these votes has yet to
been seen, this analysis explains why the election will be closer than a simple
blow-by-blow account of the campaign might suggest.
In the campaign itself, the DPP has scored all the points thus far. But
campaign point-scoring might prove not nearly as important as the ability to
identify and mobilize core constituencies for whom those much-talked-over
campaign issues might actually be irrelevant.
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