By saying that future election campaign funds will be based on donations, Ma seems to be implying that previous election campaigns were funded by the party’s assets. In fact, with the exception of the presidential elections and in extreme emergencies, KMT campaign subsidies for candidates are very low. Although party assets should not have been used to fund election campaigns, the main harm from using these assets occurred in other areas — the assets were used to sustain the party’s enormous Leninist organizational structure, to co-opt private enterprise and to control the media. This completely destroyed commercial and political competition.
In many democracies, election campaign funds mainly come from donations as do operational costs. Apart from income from research, party think tanks also rely mainly on donations. The KMT’s plan to use the proceeds from the sale of CIC to maintain party operations, the think tanks and donations to charities such as the China Youth Corp is nothing short of another swindle and is no reform at all.
Ma thought it would be enough to send shock waves through the party to revoke the elected status of KMT Central Standing Committee members Yang Chi-hsiung (楊吉雄) and Chiang Da-lung (江達隆), who were found to have bribed party delegates, but the public protested that the two greenhorns were being sacrificed for giving away salted fish, while the party failed to go after the big fish.
In the evening before Ma took office as KMT chairman, the DPP released the results of an opinion poll indicating that more than 50 percent of respondents opposed Ma taking the position. A majority did not think that Ma would improve his ineffective rule, eliminate the KMT’s black gold politics or solve the party asset issue. In response, the KMT claimed that the results were not credible. Surveys by Chinese-language newspapers the Apple Daily and the China Times, however, also showed that nearly 50 percent of respondents opposed Ma taking over the chairmanship and more than 50 percent of respondents of Global Views monthly magazine’s poll were against it as well. This means that a majority of the public did not think Ma doubling as KMT chairman would help solve the party’s problems.
Ma has already lost his dominant role in the KMT, but what is most worrying is his ambition to centralize power. Past experience shows that Chen’s aggressiveness in controlling the party was disastrous. Ma’s maneuvering and governing capabilities are inferior to Chen’s and his attempt to show strength by doubling as KMT chairman seems to be the beginning of yet another disaster.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG
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