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Editorial: Exploiting pan-blue rifts

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) hasn't had much opportunity to exercise leadership lately, especially as it reels under the burgeoning corruption scandal involving the Kaohsiung MRT project.

This, coupled with the pan-blue camp's efforts to undermine the constitutional framework of government through the cross-strait peace advancement bill and a partisan version of a national communications commission bill, has left President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) with little to do other than crisis management.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to learn that Chen had chosen Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to go to South Korea as his envoy for an APEC meeting.

Suddenly, for one brief shining moment, it appeared that the DPP had a strategy for dealing with the intransigent pan-blues -- divide and conquer. How gleefully pan-green strategists must have reacted as they watched Wang and KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) pick away at each other, as Ma admitted that he felt "disrespected" by not being informed of the situation. Meanwhile, Wang offered a casual backhand to Ma, saying he would inform his party chairman "at the appropriate time" -- effectively telling Ma, "Take it easy, junior. You know what I want you to know, when I want you to know it."

The point is that the Ma-Wang chairmanship battle exposed a very real rift between the KMT old guard and its up-and-comers, but the pan-greens have done little to take advantage of this, and in fact have given their opponents time to regroup and gather strength.

Instead, some polls say, Chen's approval rating is at an all-time low, and most people view the DPP as just as corrupt as the KMT when it was in power.

Add to this the DPP's complete inability to advance any item on its agenda -- such as constitutional reform, a stolen-assets bill and the arms purchases from the US -- and you have the perfect picture of a lame duck administration. The Six Priority Reforms that Chen outlined in his Double Ten National Day address read more like a beauty pageant queen's victory speech than a policy agenda -- all that was missing was Chen saying he would try to implement world peace during the remainder of his term.

The problem with this situation is that there is more at stake here than the pan-green camp's chances in local government elections in December, or even its outlook for the presidential election in 2008. The government's policies are worthwhile, and will strengthen Taiwan's democratic institutions and national security. But with a resurgent pan-blue camp opposing everything the president does simply because he is the one doing it, the true value of the administration's policies is irrelevant. The question is not "Who is right and who is wrong," but simply, "Who can get things done?"

This is why it is vital for the pan-greens to chip away at the pan-blue bloc. Chen already attempted this when he tried to woo People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to make peace with the DPP. The failure of that strategy was obvious.

What remains now is not to form an alliance with any part of the pan-blue camp, but merely to exploit the natural divisions that exist between different pan-blue factions, thereby weakening the opposition's unity and undermining its discipline as a voting bloc.

The pan-greens must become more adept at playing the pan-blues off against each other, and the obvious Ma-Wang rift is clearly the best opening to exploit.
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