Page 2 of 2 Taiwanese voters call for
compromise By Craig Meer
and political nous of the DPP's contender,
former Council of Labor Affairs chairwoman and
party heavyweight Chen Chu.
Chen Chu also
had organizational leverage on her side. She hails
from the DPP's pragmatic New Tide faction, which
has a track record of electoral success stories to
its name, including President Chen's wins in 2000
and 2004. Insiders say the DPP's move formally to
ban factions at its July National Conference has
only
dimmed the style, not the substance, of New Tide
activities.
Chen Chu's win in the south
against formidable odds has set the stage for a
showdown between the DPP's hardline
pro-independence wing, which has had the ear of
the president since the start of 2006, and more
pragmatic voices centered on New Tide.
The
former, which counts among its successes this year
President Chen's abolition of the National
Unification Council in February, can be expected
to interpret Chen Chu's success as confirmation
that the president and his policies are back in
the political game. Yu Shyi-kun said at a press
conference on Saturday night that the party was on
track to continue "safeguarding Taiwan's
independence [and] sovereignty and to establish
Taiwan as a normal country".
Pan-green
pragmatists, however, will correctly see Chen
Chu's hard-fought win - she was about 5 percentage
points behind Huang in polling going into
Saturday's election - as confirmation that the
president is not an electoral asset and that the
party will need to maintain its distance from him
to regain voter support ahead of next year's
legislative elections and the presidential poll in
2008.
A DPP split is not beyond the realm
of possibility as this debate reaches conclusion,
but a more likely outcome is a compromise that
sees Chen return to the more moderate and
accommodating politics of his early years in
power. Policy and the DPP's electoral performance
stand to gain as a result.
For its part,
the TSU is unlikely to protest this new spirit of
compromise. Taiwan's small parties will face
strong pressure to unite with the major players
going into next year because of constitutional
changes that will see the size of the island's
Legislative Yuan reduced by half in the December
2007 elections.
The KMT's loss in the
south should serve to chasten some of the party's
more obstructionist tendencies. The Legislative
Yuan is dominated by the pan-blue alliance, which
controls 114 seats in the 225-seat chamber.
Crucial bills, such as the Special Arms
Procurement Act, which authorizes the purchase of
a US$16 billion package of patrol aircraft,
submarines and anti-missile batteries from the
United States, have been left floundering on the
floor of the legislature literally for years.
The arms bill was voted down for the 62nd
time in late October. However, the DPP's success
in the south will strengthen the hand of KMT
moderates such as legislative Speaker Wang
Jin-pyng, opening the way for more progress in
this and other areas.
The pressure to
behave more judiciously dovetails with the
pan-blue's leadership woes. The investigation into
KMT chairman and outgoing Taipei city Mayor Ma
Ying-jeou's use of a mayoral allowance fund - a
case that has some striking similarities to the
allegations against President Chen and his wife -
has tainted the party's most likely candidate for
president in 2008.
Ma, who until recently
was widely seen as a shoo-in for the top job,
faced questioning by black-gold prosecutors on
November 16 and admitted publicly the following
day that about NT$800,000 (US$25,000) in funds had
been cleared with forged or substituted receipts -
though he claimed a younger staffer had committed
the wrongdoing without his knowledge. If Ma is
eventually indicted over the case, the KMT
constitution obliges him to resign from the party.
The underlying message of the Taipei and
Kaohsiung mayoral elections is that Taiwanese
voters aren't happy with what their political
leadership is serving up. Those who choose not to
hear this can expect a rough ride going into next
year's legislative elections, and the presidential
race in 2008.
Craig Meer is a
freelance writer based in Taipei.
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