DPP Loss Part of Democratic Process

By Cao Changqing 曹長青

THE RESULT OF the legislative elections was difficult for everyone in the pan-green camp. Questions abound on why it happened and what the green camp should do next. Pro-pan-blue media have given two explanations for the results: It was a vote of no confidence in President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), and it was the result of the deep-greens taking the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) hostage.

There are two reasons why the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is making much of these interpretations. First, the KMT wants to lead the public into thinking that Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the party's presidential candidate, is most likely to be elected. And second, the KMT wants to lure the DPP into adopting a more moderate line, thus putting a stop to the normalization of the country and weakening the confidence of pan-green supporters.

A closer look at the election system and structure would reveal the reasons behind the DPP loss.

First, the change to a new single-member district, two-vote system. In 2005, former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄) went on a hunger strike to call for a reduction in the number of legislative seats. This came from an idealistic view of politics. However, the new system favored the KMT, with its stash of stolen assets and huge and well organized power base. As a result, when a blue and a green candidate competed for a seat in one district, the pan-blue candidate obviously had the advantage. The day the new single-member district system was decided on, the green camp's loss became unavoidable. The KMT won only 15 percent more votes than the DPP in the elections, but garnered 4.7 times the number of seats. This shows just how much the pan-blue camp benefited from the new voting system. For the pan-green camp, this was the bitter result of top party members insisting on political correctness at the expense of political reality.

A second cause of the DPP loss was the vote captains. In Yunlin County, a 27-year-old woman who had just finished her studies, never been elected to any local council and lacked political experience and qualifications became a legislator because her father had a large power base in the area. This happened while many honest, skilled, senior legislators lost, demonstrating the effectiveness of a vote captain culture at the grassroots level. The KMT has at least 250 times more assets than the DPP and can support its vote captain culture with injections of cash. This made the election battle very unbalanced, but it is the price the country had to pay for a peaceful transfer of power, and it must be endured.

The third reason behind the DPP loss was the economy. Since the green camp came to power, the Chinese Communist Party, together with the KMT, has lamented the state of affairs in Taiwan, exaggerating Taiwan's economic problems and saying the public couldn't make ends meet because the DPP government was ineffective. Even former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) went along with this and talked about how the public was suffering. And with the KMT-controlled media contributing to the distortion of facts and reinforcing this message of an economic malaise, many were swayed.

A fourth reason was overly high expectations. After the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, most democratic parties that came to power faced the same problem after taking office for the first time: very high expectations from the public. As soon as a member of the government was found to be corrupt, the party's supporters became enraged. The old media added fuel to the fire and, as a result, the public became even less forgiving of the new government than the old one. Often, democratic governments that had come to power in these new East European democracies lost in the next elections. However, as the public gradually gained more faith in democracy, the democratic parties became more successful.

Under the KMT and China's watch, Taiwan's situation is more difficult than that of East European countries. The DPP may have suffered in the elections, but as long as Taiwanese don't give up their faith in democracy and remain steadfast in upholding Taiwanese identity, Taiwan can still succeed in its quest for normalization. The pan-green camp must now leave all its old complaints behind, refrain from fingerpointing, stop being discouraged or disappointed and put all its efforts into winning over the public and outrunning the KMT in the March presidential election.

Cao Changqing is a political commentator based in the US.