Some term it a "Ceausescu moment," that instant when a supposedly all-powerful ruler suddenly understands and is overwhelmed by his vulnerability. In the Romanian dictator's case it happened when a crowd booed, for Macbeth it was seeing trees begin to move. Taiwan had its own version last week; the moment was to be savored in watching Lien Chan's (連戰) bluster as he angrily denied that senior members of the KMT were planning to split because they found insufferable the pro-unification pandering to China that Lien has made central to KMT policy. Those who can read the tea leaves of Taiwan politics will know to take with a pinch of salt Lien's strenuous denial that such a walkout might be on the cards.
Surely nobody can be surprised that there should be a revolt of native Taiwanese politicians within the KMT, only that it has taken so long to happen. That Lien was no successor to Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in any sense other than the temporal was obvious long before last year's presidential election -- look for example at his prevarication over support for Lee Teng-hui's two states reinterpretation of cross-strait relations in mid-1999. The election campaign only confirmed Lien's intention of jettisoning everything Lee stood for. After the palace coup which brought Lien to power -- which, bizarrely, relied for its success on a combination of James Soong's (宋楚瑜) supporters for its footsoldiers and the acquiescence of Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the boss of Taipei's police force -- the new chairman has surrounded himself with a cabal of unificationists mostly of mainland origin, and conducted an aggressive policy of reaching out to China's communists on exactly the party-to-party basis shunned by Lee Teng-hui (as undemocratic) for so long.
The current divisions in the KMT always existed of course; there was a "Chinese KMT" of Lee's opponents and the "Taiwan KMT" of Lee himself and his supporters. These two factions should have split years ago -- in fact the New Party's split in 1993 should have been a far more radical regrouping -- but few were willing to sacrifice the perquisites of power. Why, the unificationists asked, should they sacrifice their birthright -- the KMT's wealth and power -- to Taiwanese interlopers? Once the interlopers could be shoved aside they could return to the KMT's true path. Which is of course what happened. The result is a party trying to face two directions at once and at war with itself, resembling nothing more than a pantomime horse with its front and back legs in a kicking contest.
A formal split between the KMT's Taiwan nativist wing and the unificationists can only be a good thing for Taiwan. For one thing it should ease the standoff between the legislature and the Executive Yuan. It might even facilitate a workable coalition government and inject much needed experience into President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) administration. After all, one of the problems with coalition proposals so far is they have only come from the government's ideological enemies, who want not to share power but to seize it.
It seems ridiculous that a small group of politicians with a weak commitment to the welfare of Taiwan and an ideology that most Taiwanese do not like and which, furthermore, has already been overwhelmingly rejected at the polls, has been able to muster enough party loyalty to do as much damage to Taiwan politically and economically as Lien's KMT has. This can only continue as long as the rump of Lee Teng-hui supporters let it. That they are no longer prepared to do so is the best news we have heard this year.
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