Primary system will help all parties

When the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) forged an alliance to share the presidential ticket, many journalists and scholars predicted that the alliance's deepest worry would be the December legislative election. Based on opinion polls, many people were sure of a victory by KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and PFP Chairman James Soong(宋楚瑜).

Following this speculation was the optimistic view that the disposition of jobs in the Cabinet and state-run enterprises would resolve potential fights over party nominations for the legislative election.

But two bullets on the election's eve shattered the KMT-PFP alliance's wishful thinking. What was a hot potato one year ago is now a kindled fuse that might blast the KMT and PFP apart.

Although the KMT and PFP share common roots, there are still visible distinctions between their respective voters. In the case of the PFP, the only way out is to hold tight to those voters opposed to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in an attempt to maintain their 40 or 50 seats in the Legislative Yuan. For the PFP, as long as the street demonstrations that have been held since March 27 continue, they might be able to maintain their political momentum for the legislative election.

The KMT faces quite another scenario. While there are many KMT presidential hopefuls for the 2008 election, the KMT must maintain the party's high profile as a capable and stable government-to-be, and it must view these mass demonstrations with reservations.

Besides, the categories of KMT supporters also reflect current ethnic demarcations: apart from their traditional support from mainlanders, the KMT includes voters of other ethnic backgrounds, many of them political moderates.

If the demonstrations go on, the KMT's anti-Chen votes will not outnumber the PFP's and they risk losing some of these moderate and non-mainlander votes. Caught in this situation, many KMT legislators have distanced themselves from the mass demonstrations. Some KMT legislators have even called for an end to the protests.

More than one year ago, when the KMT and PFP forged their alliance, they made a preliminary decision that the number of legislative candidates will increase by one on top of the current quotas. But after the cutthroat presidential election and a string of demonstrations, the basic formula of 55 percent versus 45 percent has already shifted, and its components are changing. If the KMT-PFP alliance prepares nominations based on this formula, it may suffer another defeat due to a too-large number of nominees.

The only way to resolve the KMT's and PFP's current dilemma is to introduce US-style primary elections. Through the mechanism of primary elections, the KMT-PFP alliance can decide whether to increase the number of legislative nominees according to popularity ratings. Then increased quotas can be allotted to the KMT or PFP nominees in proportion to their respective popular support.

However, there is a possibility that green-camp supporters may rush to vote in these primary elections and thus undermine their credibility. If the KMT-PFP alliance wishes to exclude such a possibility, it should introduce legislation to have the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and the other two parties hold primaries on the same day, and to have voters vote for only one party each. In this way, the blue and green supporters will not overstep their party lines and influence other parties' primary results.

The primary nominations for public offices draft law (公職人員政黨提名初選條例) proposed by DPP Legislator Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄) already specifies such a primary system. Nonetheless, knowing this proposal will not do anything to boost their nominations, the KMT and PFP boycotted it. Some pan-blue legislators think this draft law would only keep the DPP's house in order and that they need not endorse the bill, saying this would be meddling in other parties' domestic affairs.

Yet among the four parties in Taiwan, only the DPP adopts democratic procedures for party elections. In other parties, if it is not the chairman who hand-picks nominees, it is an oligarch-like nomination committee that does this job.

The KMT's and PFP's bottleneck is not their lack of political stars or of popular support. Rather, what the KMT and PFP lack is a mechanism for democratic procedures. If the KMT and PFP legislators could have seen the bigger picture and supported the draft law mandating primaries one year ago, they might not have had to face their parties' presidential election defeat, let alone the more divisive legislative nomination process.

On April 10, the DPP held its provisional National Congress and changed its method for nominating candidates for at-large legislative seats. More significantly, the campaign promise to halve the seats in the Legislative Yuan was under discussion in this meeting. While the DPP already sounded its horn to begin the second cutthroat fight, the pan-blue camp is still in the swamp of street protests. Not only is the rivalry for legislative nominations yet to be resolved, the alliance's campaign appeals also fall short.

There is a wealth of talent in the KMT. The prospect to stage a comeback remains promising. The only thing the party lacks is a mechanism of democratic procedures, which is of paramount importance for party reforms to be realized. Only through a mechanism of democratic procedures can the alliance of the KMT and PFP achieve stability.

Jan Shou-jung is a former legislative assistant.

Translated by Wang Hsiao-wen