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Wang is no fool to pass up the vice presidency

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) struggled for months over the question of whether Wang would agree to be Ma's running mate. Perhaps the key to the problem lies in two mistakes.

The first mistake was to believe that Wang was resentful following his losses to Ma in the KMT chairmanship election and the presidential primary. The main reason, however, is probably that Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮) complaints over the past seven years have showed Wang that the vice presidency is not a very desirable job that carries less clout than a ministerial position.

Some people have suggested that if Wang were to become vice president, he should be put in charge of interior affairs. These people have said all that would be needed for this to happen would be the president's authorization. But Taiwan does not have a full presidential system. The premier sits between the president and the Cabinet, and the president is criticized if he interferes with Cabinet affairs. Imagine the criticism if a vice president were to get involved in Cabinet interests. Wang is smart enough to understand this.

US President George W. Bush's delegation of defense and diplomatic affairs to Vice President Dick Cheney was based on long-term trust. Is there any such long-term trust between Ma and Wang?

Some may think that the vice presidency would be a promotion and offer Wang an opportunity, so they have pushed Wang to team up with Ma. This might be favorable to the KMT's presidential campaign and to the two men themselves, but it does not take Wang's wishes into consideration.

The KMT's second mistake was to believe the ethnic issue is crucial to Ma's winning the presidency. Both Ma and Wang appear to believe this. In the authoritarian era, the KMT's ethnic discrimination did cause social conflict, but following Taiwan's democratization over the past 15 years, the focus of social conflict has shifted from ethnicity to the unification issue, although the ethnic issue still requires cautious handling.

It is because the ethnic issue is no longer the major problem that Ma defeated Wang in the speaker's hometown of Kaohsiung in the KMT's chairmanship election.

Today, support for independence has risen to 55 percent, while support for unification has fallen to 30 percent. The trend implies that pro-independence sentiment will continue to grow at the expense of support for unification. Although the KMT needs to take care of the ethnic issue internally, the major external issue is its stance on the unification issue.

Obviously, some inside the KMT have discovered this. These people have proposed that Taiwan, rather than China, be made the party's priority and that the call for unification in the party charter be rephrased. Party diehards, however, know that "unification" remains their biggest bargaining chip for internal power and they have tried to shift the focus back from unification to ethnicity. By showing their respect for Wang, they are trying to exchange concessions on the ethnic issue for more room on the unification issue.

The hype for a Ma-Wang ticket was built on misjudgments of both Wang and the political situation. It is not worth spending more time on.

What does deserve our attention is that once the KMT amends its party charter, Taiwan's political situation will be profoundly changed.

Whether this change will be completed by the KMT's National Assembly on June 24 is uncertain, but the pan-green camp must not take the situation lightly but rather face it head on.

Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.

Translated by Eddy Chang
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