Editorial: The KMT of old returns

The KMT's acting chairman, Lien Chan (連戰), spent a large part of yesterday listening to aged party stalwarts who had been sidelined by Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) localization policy. They had important things to tell him, such as the importance of stressing the "Chinese" aspect of the Chinese Nationalist Party and the desirability of bringing true believers in the legacy of Sun Yat-sen back into the KMT fold.

There is a great Ph.D. thesis waiting to be written on the seemingly natural tendency of political parties after a resounding election defeat to blame a lack of fundamentalist zeal on their part, or their candidates' or leaders' parts, for their humiliation. Why this should be so, we do not know. But it is vouchsafed by experience in country after country. We have previously remarked on the experience of Britain, where the Labour party turned strongly leftward after its defeat in 1979 and where the Conservative party has drifted toward the anti-Europe right since its crushing in 1997. Elsewhere, the story is similar. Perhaps it is because political ideology is a matter of faith -- always so difficult to question -- rather than pragmatism; it is so much easier to question the delivery of the message than the message itself.

So it is now with the KMT. The party lost because, Lien is being told, it was not true to its roots. Lee's localization meant in effect that the larger goals around which the party's ideology was formed -- notably Chinese nationalism, the three principles of the people and social justice -- were lost amid the scramble for power of local political factions whose opportunism alienated so many Taiwanese voters.

This newspaper is firmly of the belief that a move to reassert the core values of the traditional KMT outlook is to make the party unelectable. We think this because while we admit that social justice concepts certainly have an important role to play in Taiwan politics -- and have been neglected both by the Taiwan KMT of Lee and the DPP, the core values of which owe much to the gentry backgrounds of its original founders -- the other two legs of this ideological tripod are broken. Most people in Taiwan associate Chinese nationalism these days with PRC hegemony, and the Three Principles of the People is of historical importance only. We believe that the KMT, if it pursues a return to its roots, to its so-called core beliefs, will alienate itself from the vast majority of voters and be forced to operate at the political margins.

We must, however, recognize that one of the main arguments being tossed at Lien is to compare the KMT's performance with that of James Soong (宋楚瑜). With no party base and limited funds, Soong, as an independent candidate, thrashed the KMT in the presidential election. Why? Because, the argument goes, Soong represented old fashioned KMT values, the robust "get things done to help the people" dynamism of Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) -- now elevated to KMT sainthood by the old guard.

Is this a fair analysis of the Soong phenomenon? We would argue that Soong's popularity is not a result of his eloquent espousal of traditional KMT values, but rather because he hijacked the only part of those values that strikes a chord with a modern Taiwanese electorate -- social justice -- and ditched the rest. Being ejected from the party allowed him to choose from its policy menu a la carte. Many of the old guard want Soong to inherit the KMT. But, in the end, Soong will prove no better a keeper of the Chinese Nationalist grail than Lee Teng-hui. Not if he ever wants to be elected in Taiwan.