Former secretary-general of the Presidential Office Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟) has joined the supporters of former senior presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming’s (辜寬敏) bid for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairmanship. Chen echoed Koo’s suggestion that the party’s 5.44 million supporters be consolidated, and called on the DPP not to follow the middle road because the party should meet the expectations of the 5.44 million people who voted for it. DPP Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮), another candidate for the top DPP job, has also placed holding on to these key voters at the heart of his bid for the chairmanship.
No DPP members would deny the importance of consolidating the party’s existing supporters. But the question is why these 5.44 million people voted for the DPP. What can the party do to hang onto these supporters?
Over the past 20 years, there have been great changes in the structure of DPP support. Pro-Taiwanese intellectuals, young people and the urban middle class were the backbone of early DPP support. Rural voters in central and southern Taiwan were not attracted to the party until the late 1990s or even later, after it took power.
Latecomers did not give the party their support because of its abstract idealistic promotion of Taiwanese independence but because its policies placed more importance on the balance between north and south and on the interests of farmers and workers, such as pensions for farmers. The success of local DPP governments also won the party support and votes.
This kind of support, however, is not very stable because it is attached to the party’s political promises and government resources. As long as president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) can maintain a strategy balancing the north and south, it won’t be too difficult for him to completely turn the tables on the DPP over the next few years. We may know the outcome after the county commissioner and city mayor elections at the end of next year — the most optimistic forecast is that the DPP will lose just two seats, while the worst case-scenario is that it will disappear altogether.
However, the long-term supporters have remained loyal as they have a deeper understanding of and have thought more about the characteristics of a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government and Taiwan’s historical development. Their feeling is that however unsatisfactory the DPP’s performance may have been, it is still superior to that of the KMT.
These people are idealistic supporters who demand that the politicians they support meet certain standards. They do not think that Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) — or the ministry’s former secretary-general Chuang Kuo-rong (莊國榮) — represent localization, or that integrity issues should be covered up by the sovereignty issue. They have tried to influence their friends to support the DPP, but when they are ridiculed for the party’s actions, they won’t launch a strong defense but just reply with silence.
These supporters have been voting with tears in their eyes in recent years. They are like victims of domestic violence — although mentally and physically traumatized, they are still unwilling to abandon their abuser. But if the perpetrator declares that they remain because they like to be mistreated and thus should continue to be mistreated, they must come out and protest.
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