Reform is the buzzword at Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) headquarters these days.
In his second stint as party chairman, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is finally trying to make good on promises to overhaul the creaking dinosaur that is the KMT after failing miserably the first time around.
Ma brought in trusted aide King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) as KMT secretary-general in December to take care of this daunting task, but so far the path to reform has been anything but smooth.
First, King’s high-profile appointment of an outsider as the party’s personnel guru was scuppered when he was forced to resign following lurid media accusations.
Even more worrying for the party, however, is that since the reforms began, two rounds of by-elections have seen the KMT defeated in six out of seven seats, with five of these defeats coming in constituencies considered to be KMT strongholds.
Nevertheless, the party on Wednesday vowed to carry on with reform and continue to nominate what it called “clean and honest” candidates — apparently unaware of or unconcerned about what this implies about the party’s past and present representatives.
Long-time observers of Taiwan and its political environment understand how the nation’s grassroots politics is made up of a complicated web of patronage networks involving powerful families, local clans and temples.
Many would argue that since Taiwan’s democratization, the KMT’s success at maintaining power at the local and legislative levels has been built on its ability to control these intricate networks and keep funds trickling down.
Nominating upstanding candidates in the name of reform may be the righteous thing to do, but in reality ignoring the KMT’s well-connected local faction leaders and allowing the money to dry up is tantamount to political suicide and will surely lead to the votes drying up, resulting in even more defeats.
Abandoning one’s traditional power base is even riskier given the party’s present support rates and its increasing lack of appeal at the national level.
Many people have begun to realize that the Ma they voted for in March 2008 is not the one they received.
No matter how the KMT dresses it up, Ma’s policy of embracing China while banking on Beijing to secure Taiwan’s future prosperity has harmed the nation’s sovereignty and put it on a slippery slope toward unification. This goes against the wishes of the majority, including many who voted for the president the last time around.
If this string of recent results at the polls were repeated in the next legislative elections, it could lead to the previously unthinkable — the KMT losing control of the legislature.
If December’s elections for the mayors of five special municipalities bring more defeats for the party, legislators will begin to get nervous and senior party members will begin to ratchet up the pressure on Ma and his flunkies, severely testing their will to pursue their agenda further.
Should this happen, there can only be one winner — and the smart money will not be on reform prevailing.
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