Wed, Nov 28, 2001 page9

• Factions determine election dealing

  Recent studies have put forward the proposition that it is factions and not political parties that determine voter behavior

  • By Bruce Jacobs
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  Most academic and journalistic analyses of modern Taiwan politics focus on political parties. How many seats will the DPP, KMT, PFP, TSU and New Party win in the new legislature? How will the parties' distribution of seats affect a post-election coalition? Such questions assume that party politics have gained great importance in Taiwan's politics.

  Despite the rise of the DPP, I would argue that the decline of the formerly quasi-Leninist KMT has actually led to the reduced importance of political parties in Taiwan.

  

  ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

  We can gain a sense of this change by considering the defections of key former KMT leaders such as as Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) and James Soong (宋楚瑜) as well as the defections of key former DPP leaders including past chairmen Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) and Shih Ming-te (施明德).

  If a party is declining in importance at the central level, it it even less important at local levels.

  Two recent field studies during August and September and during the current campaign in Chiayi County confirm that factions-and not parties-are the crucial factor in structuring voter behavior.

  Some may argue that Chiayi County is different, but factions-and not party still remain the key organizing structures for campaigns in much of Taiwan.

  In Kaohsiung County, for example, the Black Faction united with the DPP, but the Red and White factions have continued to contest elections against each other as well as the Black.

  One cannot begin to explain the recent twists and turns in the "pan-blue" camp unless one realizes that county executive candidate Wu Kuang-hsun (吳光訓) represents the White Faction while Huang Pa-yeh (黃八德) represents the Red Faction. This explains why the "pan-blue" forces cannot agree.

  Even the PFP is split in Kaohsiung County. James Soong follows one PFP legislative candidate in supporting Huang while another PFP legislative candidate supports Wu.

  Chiayi County provides an interesting, if complicated, example of the importance of factions as opposed to parties. Of the 15 candidates -- five running for county executive and 10 for the legislative -- fully two-thirds-have changed their party affiliation since the last legislative election three years ago. And the two most prominent KMT candidates neglect to mention their KMT affiliation in their campaign literature.

  To understand Chiayi County politics, one must start with its three factions: the large Huang (黃) and Lin (林) factions and the smaller Hsiao family squad (蕭家班). The Huang and Lin factions date back more than three decades. Under the old one-party KMT state, they both belonged to the KMT and even in the 1970s the KMT had only mixed success in its efforts to bring the two factions under its control.

  The Hsiao family squad, which has a reputation of being one of the "blackest" political forces in Taiwan, has more recently gained influence with three powerful brothers. One, the Chiayi Municipality Assembly Speaker, died earlier this year. A second brother, Hsiao Teng-piao (蕭登標), who earlier served as Speaker of the Chiayi County Assembly, has lost his appeal over a criminal conviction and must return to jail. The third brother is currently running for the legislature from Chiayi Municipality.

  The Huang faction has maintained dominance in Chiayi County for the past 12 years. Li Ya-ching (李雅景), the Huang faction leader, has completed two terms as county executive. Last year, during the presidential election, he formally campaigned for Lien Chan (連戰), but most people said he favored James Soong. During the KMT membership re-registration earlier this year, County Executive Li Ya-ching let his membership lapse and, despite his intention to run for the legislature, did not register for the KMT nomination.

  The KMT nominated a current legislator, Weng Chung-chun (翁重鈞), for county executive. Chiayi has four legislative seats, and normally the KMT would have nominated two candidates. However, knowing that Li Ya-ching would win one seat as a non-partisan, the KMT nominated only one person for the legislature, a young female incumbent, Hsiao Wan-yu (蕭宛瑜), a niece of former County Assembly Speaker Hsiao Teng-piao. However, even after the nomination, people said it was likely that Hsiao Teng-piao would run and that his niece would not register. This, in fact, happened and the KMT was left with no nominees for the legislature. (When Hsiao Teng-piao lost his appeal after candidacy registrations had closed, he was disqualified from running and his niece could no longer register).

  The KMT used national leaders to convince Li Ya-ching to run under the KMT banner and "drafted" (徵召), rather than "nominated" (提名), Li Ya-ching and Hsi-kou Township Executive Tsai Chi-hui (蔡吉輝) for the legislature. Yet of the three candidates only Tsai, the weakest candidate, makes even the slightest reference to the KMT in his campaign literature with his use of the KMT star. The campaign literature of Li and county executive candidate Weng makes absolutely no reference to the KMT at all. Clearly, only Tsai among the KMT candidates believes that affiliation with the KMT will increase his vote total. The situation in the DPP, though a bit different, also confirms the absence of strong party identification. The DPP decided to nominate a candidate for county executive and two candidates for the legislature realizing that the party would have to do particularly well to win two legislative seats in Chiayi County. For county executive, the DPP nominated Ho Chia-jung (何嘉榮), a current legislator (elected in 1998) who earlier had served as a KMT county executive and who unsuccessfully ran under the DPP for county executive against Li Ya-ching in 1997.

  During that campaign, Li Ya-ching sued Ho Chia-jung for libel and won his case. At the time of his DPP nomination earlier this year, many people expressed concern that Ho's appeal would prove unsuccessful and he would be disqualified from office. This would have left the DPP without a candidate.

  At the same time, a current legislator who was elected as a KMT candidate in 1998, Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) was trying to position himself as a potential DPP candidate for county executive. Running under the slogan of "ending factions," this Lin faction leader used substantial amounts of green in his newspaper advertisements to convey his "closeness" to the DPP.

  According to Chen Ming-wen, as a KMT legislator, he had signed the petition to impeach President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) last year. When he returned to Chiayi, people told him he was wrong. When he returned to Taipei, he removed his signature from the impeachment petition and resigned from the KMT.

  When President Chen Shui-bian visited Chiayi in early September this year, both Ho Chia-jung and Cheng Ming-wen jockeyed for position to be seen next to the president, and newspapers photos showed one on each side. Apparently under considerable pressure from the presidential office, Ho Chia-jung and Cheng Ming-wen agreed to have a public opinion poll to discover who was more popular. They agreed the loser would withdraw in favor of the winner.

  Ho Chia-jung had won some earlier polls and was confident he would win. He hoped to combine the power of the DPP and the Lin faction. Since the Lin faction has less power than the Huang faction, Chen Ming-wen similarly hoped to add DPP votes to his Lin faction support base. In the lead-up to the public opinion poll, Chen Ming-wen supporters made calls throughout the county and Chen won the poll by 4 percent.

  Two days later, Ho Chia-jung was forced from the race by the failure of his court appeal, his need to serve a prison sentence and his consequent disqualification from office. The DPP "drafted" Cheng Ming-wen, who is happily using his DPP affiliation of two months in his campaign. For the legislature, the DPP nominated two candidates. Although his father was a famous Huang faction leader who served as a KMT Chiayi County Speaker in the 1970s, Tsai Chi-fang (蔡啟芳) has been a long-term member of the DPP. A self-confessed former hoodlum, Tsai spent four years in prison on Green Island during the 1980s. When released, he joined the DPP and is the only person to have been elected to office in both Chiayi County and Chiayi Municipality since their division in 1991. Among the 15 candidates in Chiayi, he may be the only one who has maintained his party membership for over a decade.

  The DPP nominated a faithful aide to Ho Chia-jung, Ho Chin-sung (何金松), for the second legislative position. Ho Chin-sung even spent four months in jail on behalf of Ho Chia-jung, a debt that is not being repaid during this campaign. With the formal registration of candidacy the unimportance of party among candidates became even more obvious.

  In addition to KMT candidate Weng Chung-chun and DPP candidate Chen Ming-wen, three additional people registered candidacies for county executive. Li Ming-hsien (李明憲), a doctor who moved from Changhua a decade ago, joined the DPP a year ago and gave the Chiayi County DPP headquarters its office for a nominal rent. Li hoped to be "drafted" by the DPP, but no one on the DPP Central Standing Committee, which discussed Li's case, supported his application. Li is now running an expensive, though futile campaign, and has been expelled from the DPP.

  Both of the other candidates have been expelled from the KMT. One, a former county education bureau chief angry about his treatment during the nomination process, wanted to hurt the Huang faction candidacy. The other, a township executive, apparently just likes politics. Neither will receive many votes.

  The situation in the legislative election, with 10 candidates running for four positions is more complicated, but also indicates the unimportance of party identification. Li Ya-ching, the Huang faction leader who left the KMT and returned after being beseeched, should win the greatest number of votes. Tsai Chi-fang, the long-term DPP member, should come in second. The probable third winner is Chang Hua-kuan (張花冠), the wife of current legislator and key Lin faction leader, Tseng Chen-nung (曾振農). Tseng, a former KMT member, is widely perceived as one of the legislature's worst performers, but local pundits say his wife is quite talented. She recently announced she would join the DPP when elected. Chang Chun-mei (張淳美), the wife of Ho Chia-jung, the ousted DPP candidate for county executive, is also running for the legislature. If Ho had wanted to hurt the DPP candidate for county executive, he should have run his wife for that post. But by running her for the legislature, he would damage the chances of his long-term aide, the DPP nominee Ho Chin-sung, as both are from the same area.

  The prosecutors asked Ho Chia-jung to report for imprisonment on Dec. 3, after the election. He has decided to report for prison today, just before the election and he and his wife are running a three day procession through all parts of Chiayi County culminating in his entry to prison in an effort to seek sympathy votes for Chang Chun-mei's campaign.

  The cynics say he had already paid his vote captains (樁腳) for his county executive candidacy, so he would not suffer any losses by running his wife for legislature and he might be able to retain his local support despite his imminent imprisonment. Ho Chia-jung, who remains a legislator, still remains a DPP member, but his wife has been expelled.

  To finish the story, the PFP legislative candidate is a former KMT county executive who recently left the KMT, while the TSU candidate formerly belonged to the DPP. He states that he ran against the DPP candidate in 1998 at the request of Peng Min-min(彭明敏) and is now running for the TSU at the request of Lee Teng-hui(李登輝). The final two candidates, the New Party nominee and a non-partisan, have left no marks on the campaign. With such obvious lack of party loyalty among candidates, how do we explain the stress on political parties in current academic and journalistic analyses?

  There are three key factors. First, political science stresses the importance of parties. The largely Western-trained political scientists and journalists naturally look to familiar analyses. Ironically, political parties in the US, the Western model most used by Taiwan academics and journalists, are relatively weak when compared with other western, democratic examples. Taiwan's political parties, despite their quasi-Leninist heritage, are even weaker.

  Second, all of the key parties stress their own importance. Even in the authoritarian 1970s, the KMT stressed its importance despite its weakness at local levels. Taiwan's parties sometimes urge voters to cast ballots on the basis of party platforms and nominations, but Taiwan's voters still tend to vote for the candidate rather than the party. And, in many areas of Taiwan outside of Taipei Municipality, "voting for the person" (選人) means voting for the factional candidate.

  Third, many leading Taiwan academics and journalists live in Taipei, the city on which many foreign observers also focus.

  Taipei, consisting mainly of relatively educated and affluent immigrants from the China and also other parts of Taiwan, is very different from the rest of the island and its politics also differ greatly.

  Taipei Municipality voters have long rejected most aspects of machine politics and, to a greater degree than other parts of Taiwan, do vote for party nominees. However, even Taipei voters often swing between parties because their desire to support particular candidates is stronger than their wish to support a particular party.

  The ease with which Taiwan's politicians shift party allegiance suggests that the total number of seats won by each party on Saturday will at best be a preliminary indication of the post-election political arrangements. Substantial political bargaining will commence on Sunday, if not before, and major shifts in party allegiances may take place. The "pan-green" coalition will have the advantage in that it will have first chance to form the Cabinet and with that political power will come the opportunity to offer incentives to legislators to join the winning coalition. I anticipate that a sufficient number of newly-elected legislators will find such a prospect attractive and that President Chen Shui-bian will be able to form his "cross-party coalition for national stability."

  Bruce Jacobs (家博) is professor of Asian Languages and Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His writings on Taiwan include Local Politics in a Rural Chinese Cultural Setting: A Field Study of `Mazu' Township, Taiwan (1980), a book he is currently updating to analyze Taiwan's transition to democracy at the local level.
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