The UK's Conservative Party has changed three leaders during its seven years in opposition without picking up its momentum. Although British Prime Minister Tony Blair is under unprecedented pressure to step down, the British public's confidence in the Tories has not yet been restored.
The Guardian columnist Andrew Rawnsley once described the party as spiraling into chaos, morale sinking to the bottom, and its leadership useless. The major reason for the Tories' downfall is incessant internecine fights. Rawnsley lampooned the Tories for fighting with each other because they have nothing better to do; they row with each other because internal strife has been one of few things they have excelled at in recent years; the Tories have not failed to improve over the years, their enhanced capacity for intra-party struggle is one feat; and that Blair would not be smiling if the Tories were equally good at wrestling with the Labor Party as they are at intra-party struggle.
If we apply Rawnsley's depiction of the Tories to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), we only have to change a few nouns. Nearly every word corresponds to the KMT's current situation.
Since former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) took power 16 years ago, the KMT has been mired in factional strife. It was split into three parties that have kept fighting each other. The inter-party conflict results in hurting all the three and benefits the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) instead. Over the past year, the splinter parties and the KMT were eventually reunited under the rubric of the pan-blue alliance. After the alliance, however, factional strife still occurred on a monthly basis. After the presidential election defeat, the inter-party clashes began again. Although the KMT and the People First Party (PFP) chairmen appeared to be patting each other's shoulders, their respective legislators turned bitter and lashed out at each other.
Some PFP legislators are all mouth and no trousers.
They call daily press conferences and slash at randomly chosen targets. They make verbal attacks a daily necessity, as if they would die for the lack of making them. They even foam at the mouth when discussing who is the biggest wimp in the KMT. Such meddling in another party's internal affairs only shows that they have too much time on their hands.
The former leader of the UK's Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith once warned his party in November 2002: "My message is simple and stark: unite or die." Ironically, the party neither united nor died. It simply withered away. The pan-blue parties today are at the same turning point of "unite or die." Nonetheless, they have no clue about their impending crisis, just like their UK counterparts.
Over the past few years, the Conservative Party has been jeered as "a party on another planet." Although party leaders have been dreaming of a return to Downing Street and reverting to their glorious past, the election results over the past seven years prove the party's complete divorce from society. The election defeats also show that the Conservative Party is a doomed party without present or future prospects.
There are many similarities between the KMT and the Conservative Party, and between KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
Wang Chien-chuang is president of The Journalist magazine.
TRANSLATED BY WANG HSIAO-WEN
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