Currently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) resembles nothing so much as two men in a pantomime donkey suit kicking each other.
On the one hand we have party Chairman Lien Chan (
On the other hand we have KMT members wondering whether "Chinese" and even "Nationalist" should be dropped from the KMT's name. While we are puzzled as to what that might leave -- the Party sounds Orwellian in the extreme, but maybe even we could vote for the Party Party -- it is a reflection that not everyone in the KMT is an intellectual basket case.
The problem is that changing the name of the KMT doesn't make sense unless you have some idea of what the party stands for. Currently there is no consensus on this.
For too many senior figures like Lien, the KMT stands for their divine right to rule without subjecting themselves to anything as demeaning as the approval of the hoi polloi at the polls. Lien can't get over the fact that elections aren't formalities endorsing his greatness.
A younger KMT generation, one that came of age in a political environment where elections are real and power comes via the ballot box, is realistically asking how the KMT can be made more attractive at the polls. To see that this is possible, one only has to look at the electoral success of the post-communists in Eastern Europe to see that a less-than-appealing history does not doom a party forever at the polls. It might pay the KMT's reformers to look seriously in Eastern Europe's direction not so much for inspiration as to how to rebrand itself, but for mechanisms by which this rebranding might be achieved.
The most important thing that the KMT needs, though members can't openly discuss this, is a mechanism by which its leader can be removed. That it does not have this is a sign of political immaturity and the KMT's origins in strongman rule.
The KMT has always valued loyalty over ability or, in fact, anything else. What it is not able to grasp is that loyalty to a party goes beyond loyalty to a particular leader.
Successful political parties tend to be those that, within an atmosphere in which party loyalty is cultivated, nevertheless are ruthless in getting rid of leaders who have become liabilities -- the British Conservatives' removal of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher is a memorable example.
The purpose of a party is to win power through election victories. Anything that interferes with that goal has to be jettisoned. To deny your party the power that is its reason for being because of loyalty to any particular leader is a plainly suicidal course.
Lien is a three-time loser now; he has lost two presidential elections and led his party to its worst-ever drubbing in legislative elections in 2001. There is no reason to suppose that the KMT's performance will be any better given its antics in the last couple of months.
In response to Lien's temper tantrum that those who would concede the election should leave the party, he deserves an ultimatum: If the recount goes against the KMT, he must go -- or else face the mass resignation of his party's brightest and best.
Toward someone as vain as Lien, this will be a risky challenge. But it has to be done.
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