During a meeting of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) Central Standing Committee on May 19, party Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) proposed merging the KMT and the People First Party (PFP). The proposal was passed by a unanimous vote. The KMT has split three times following the end of martial law, giving rise to the New Party, the PFP and the Taiwan Solidarity Union. Now we finally see a first possibility of a blue camp merger.
Over the past few years, the development of party politics has led to the formation of two major camps, the blue and the green, mainly divided along the unification-independence rift. Although there are four main parties in the Legislative Yuan, the blue-green opposition is abundantly clear in presidential elections and elections for executive single-seat offices at other government levels (eg, city mayor or county commissioner).
The political situation of no party holding a majority that resulted from the 2000 presidential election and the 2001 legislative elections has made inter-party cooperation the most important topic in domestic politics.
Such cooperation can take at least four different forms: the loosest kind, cooperation on issues in the legislature; legislative party alliances; election alliances and joint campaigning; and the most extreme variety, party mergers.
The KMT and the PFP, both part of the blue camp and originally one party, have gone through the first three of these types of cooperation, including forming an alliance to campaign on a joint ticket during the presidential election. They are now planning a full merger. Although this development is the result of a certain process, its future prospects are not too positive.
A merger creates major uncertainties, such as the post-merger distribution of power, the succession issue, mutual trust between leaders, the struggle over political direction and core discourse, and a merger's impact on each party's supporters. Yet the most immediate and real problem it poses is this: will a merger of the KMT and the PFP be beneficial in the year-end legislative elections? Will it help consolidate and expand voter support? Will it help to diminish internal pan-blue conflict during campaigning?
Practically speaking, regardless of whether the actual merger takes place before or after the elections, the KMT and the PFP must immediately start negotiating quotas for legislative nomination lists, striving for fairness. They must also cooperate fully during the campaign (eg, when it comes to vote allocation, which is aimed at distributing the number of votes evenly between candidates to maximize the number of seats won under the multi-member district electoral system). If they don't, the year-end legislative elections will become the main stumbling block to a merger.
Since candidates in legislative elections compete for the same pool of voters under the multi-member districts with a single nontransferable vote system, their biggest competitors are often other candidates from their own party. Further, since they can be elected with the support of a small group of voters, they do not have to gain recognition from a majority. Their main goal thus becomes the consolidation of a pool of voters, and clear exposure of their personal traits often becomes an important part of the campaign process.
Given such systemic temptation, legislative elections often result in internecine fighting, candidates undermining each others' positions, trickery and weak party discipline.
No matter how united Lien and Soong are, therefore, the question of whether KMT and PFP candidates will pass the legislative election test will be the key to determining whether they can follow through with the merger. Faced with this test, they could learn from the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) experience.
Ever since its inception, the DPP has had a problem with a multitude of internal factions and constant conflict. The party's nomination system has been revamped over and over again, and it is still not perfect. The important thing, however, is that the DPP has established a set of internal nomination rules acceptable to everyone and that no one dares lightly go against.
Everyone plays according to the game rules and accepts a loss. Even if you know you have the support of a large number of party members, and even if there is substantial conflict over opinion polls, at least intra-party competition follows the game rules. People don't start crying that they will leave the party or splinter at every turn, because they know DPP supporters will not accept a competitor who doesn't abide by the rules.
Looking at the issue from this perspective, the most important issue in the year-end elections for the KMT and the PFP, apart from the number of seats they will or won't win, is the question of whether or not they will be able to establish intra-party rules acceptable to everyone. If they can't, it would be difficult to rule out yet another split following the elections, even if a pre-election merger could be forced through.
Wang Yeh-lih is a political science professor at Tunghai University. Translated by Perry Svensson
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