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Editorial: KMT going down the wrong path

The poll released yesterday, and cited by Taipei City Councilor and legislative candidate Lin Chin-chang (林晉章), contains a number of puzzling contradictions. For example, while 19.21 percent of respondents claimed to support the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) compared with 32.26 percent who support the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), we also learn that 20.74 percent of respondents said that they would vote for DPP candidates in the year-end legislative elections and 14.57 percent for KMT candidates. It's hard to make sense of that. It does appear, however, that the greens should cruise to a majority in the legislature in December, and government in Taiwan can begin again.

But the more interesting thing about the poll was what it might tell us about the topic of localization. In terms of which party "loves Taiwan," the DPP beat the KMT by a 2:1 ratio. Just as interesting, a very large number of respondents said they believed the reason the DPP was able to obtain power so soon after its creation was because of its Taiwan-centered consciousness.

Lin has taken the results of the poll to mean that people reject the idea of "one China," and he advises the KMT to drop its commitment to this ideal or else face catastrophe at the polls. But "one China" is a symptom of the KMT's malaise, not its cause. The real locus of the KMT's problems is in the leadership's refusal to face facts.

The election result in March should have been a wake-up call. In 2000 Lien Chan (連戰) eschewed Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) legacy in his election campaign and lost miserably. Instead of learning his lesson and embracing Lee's legacy, which at the time was the mainstream position in Taiwan (though voters were confused as to who represented it) he became more doctrinaire, clinging more closely to the "old days when there was hope" -- referring to the dictatorship of former secret-police chief Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). He then forged an alliance with the People First Party's (PFP) James Soong (宋楚瑜), the very antithesis of everything Lee stood for, and together they were both beaten. While this should have been overwhelming proof that Lien had taken the party in the wrong direction, he escaped the consequences by claiming that the election was rigged. He has since tried to lead his party into even more serious folly.

The last thing the KMT needs, if it is to become centrist and mainstream again, is a merger with the PFP. Yet this is exactly what Lien has been working on.

You might think that the election results since 1996 show the popularity of the "Lee Teng-hui line" and the likely success at the polls of whoever can assume the mantle of heir to the pragmatic pro-Taiwan centrism that was Lee's hallmark. Yet James Soong said that he would not merge with the KMT as long as it still retained what he called "the stink of Lee Teng-hui." We can only interpret this as ideology blinding common sense.

If the KMT wants to see power again, it has to become what Lee tried to make it (and let us note here that the centrist Lee, who kept stealing the DPP's popular policies in the 90s, was something different from the fulminating anti-China zealot he has latterly become).

Younger KMT members surely realize this. Lin is not the first among the younger generation in the party to talk of a radical makeover. Ever since the pan-blue ticket's election defeat, there has been talk in the party of adopting a more vigorous pro-Taiwan stance, dropping the "commitment" to unification and even changing the name to the Taiwan Nationalist Party.

But such voices are simply not heard, and the party is moving in exactly the opposite direction.
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