The DPP must find a new strategy

The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) election loss on Jan. 12 put an end to its long expansion period. In 2001, the DPP became the biggest party in the legislature, winning 87 of 225 legislative seats, or 38.7 percent of all seats. This time the party received a mere 27 seats, or 24 percent of the 133 seats in the reformed legislature.

Because of the new single-district, two-vote system, the pan-green camp experienced sharp declines both in its southern strongholds and in other areas, including all eight seats in Taipei City.

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has stated that the DPP was at least able to retain its fundamental supporters, giving it 37 percent of the total vote.

But the problem is that under the new voting system, votes are concentrated on two parties, meaning that merely maintaining the party's core supporters is not a winning strategy. The Taiwan Solidarity Union lost a massive number of votes while votes for the DPP did not increase significantly. For its part, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) saw a significant increase in voter support, from 32.8 percent in 2004 to 51.2 percent in the party vote on Jan. 12.

The new system allows voters to hold parties to account and voters have used this opportunity to express their strong discontent with the DPP's eight-year rule.

One of the main features of a single-district system is that it does not benefit "radical" candidates. However, as the DPP believed support for Taiwanese independence had entered the mainstream, the party hoped to win the pro-independence vote by relying on "radical" strategies in both the nomination process and the presidential campaign while neglecting public demands for stability.

The KMT, on the other hand, downplayed its pro-annexation views and instead returned to former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) localization ideas. In the 1990s, Lee directed the move toward localization, attracting supporters who wanted to build solid independence. Although support for independence was on the rise, in the three legislative elections in the 1990s support for the DPP remained at about 33 percent.

After Lee was expelled from the KMT in 2000, these votes went back to the pan-green camp. In the lead-up to the Jan. 12 elections, the KMT again picked up Lee's ideas and brought supporters back to the party.

By adopting a strongly pro-independence stance, the DPP reduced its space and, as a result, Shilin (士林) and Datong (大同) in Taipei -- both known for strong independence views -- for the first time rejected the candidate of the pro-independence party.

In modern democracies, the single-district voting system often causes dramatic changes in the rise and fall of political parties. In the House of Commons election in Japan last year, the two major parties -- the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) -- won 14 and 20 proportional seats respectively, much like the two major parties in Taiwan. But in a multi-member district system, in which each district would be represented by two to five seats, this would have resulted in 17 seats for each.

This demonstrates that the multi-member district system is a typical system for dividing the seats so that each party can get some. With single-districts, on the other hand, the two parties would have received six and 23 seats, a fourfold difference.

This is similar to the situation in Taiwan: If the Aboriginal and outlying islands seats had not been taken into account, the KMT would have won 50 local seats, four times the DPP's 13. These numbers show that with a proportional representation system, both the support base of a party and the public evaluation is taken into account, while with a single-district system, public evaluation of a party is the key factor. In addition, small differences in voter support will be multiplied several times in the division of seats won.

Some people think that a single-district system creates near-unbeatable incumbents. This might be the case in the US, with its separation between the executive and legislative powers and weak political parties, leaving Congress accountable for the administration's policies.

But in a country with a parliamentary system and strong political parties like Japan, the result is the opposite. In such a system, given that the Cabinet and the image of the parties are a key factor, a single-district system actually weakens local factions and can be used by parties to achieve a transfer of power.

For example, in last year's elections, the DPJ won 60 seats and the LDP 37, a complete inversion of the 2001 results, when they won 26 and 64 seats respectively. Logically, such results could also occur in Taiwan. But because votes in some districts are given more weight than in others, this is unlikely to happen. Thus the Taiwanese system is an unusual one -- a two-party voting system and a one-party parliamentary system.

Hence, the situation facing the DPP is more serious than just an unprecedented loss: In future it might be up against a one-party system. What the DPP must do is reassess its position and its strategy and not lose its determination. This is the only hope for the party.

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

Translated by Anna Stiggelbout