On Jan. 12, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Central Executive Committee discussed the proposals for the legislator-at-large primaries. One of them was to nominate candidates via public opinion polls and a national party representative vote. No decision was made at that time, but the committee vetoed the proposal on Wednesday last week.
I am opposed to a national party representative vote. Adding the vote to the primary would restore the evaluation of candidates by party officials, a practice that was abolished in 1996. The DPP would be controlled by factions and money, a leap away from democracy.
Despite the constant changes in the DPP’s primaries to nominate candidates for public positions, these changes have always moved things one step further on the road to democracy.
A direct vote by party members is more democratic than the indirect method of letting party officials evaluate the candidates, which is why the party member vote replaced the latter. Public opinion polls cast a wider net democratically than a party member vote, so polls have been added to primaries for public positions. Moreover, in the single-district elections following the change to the electoral system all candidates were nominated through public opinion polls to meet the requirements of the party’s core value — greater democracy.
Legislators-at-large represent the will of a party, but a party also needs to pass the test by winning the public vote. It therefore needs to take into consideration both the party’s and the public’s will. Voting by party members is the best way to express a party’s will, but after the legislature amended the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) to subject party primary candidates to vote-buying investigations, the DPP’s structural problems — with politicians paying the party membership fees for supporters — could be seen as vote-buying. Now, to protect their own interests, factions have proposed that the vote by party members be replaced with a national vote by party representatives. This, however, is less than ideal when compared with the previous system.
First, party representatives do not represent all party members, since half of them are designated because they are public positions, and thus are not directly elected by party members. Second, since there is a relatively small number of party representatives — a little more than 300 — it may be easier to manipulate them using money. This could lead to even greater concerns over vote-buying.
As former British prime minister Winston Churchill once said: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government — except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Although a party member vote is problematic in many ways, we need to reform it, rather than abolish it. For example, we can separate periods for membership fee payment and the primary schedule and we can strictly prohibit politicians from paying supporters’ party fees.
The problem of dummy party members can be addressed by holding policy presentations as part of the election process and gradually resolved by training party members. I believe that democratic problems can only be resolved through even more democratic, rather than anti-democratic, means.
The attempt to replace the party member vote with a national party representative vote represents a serious misjudgment, as it insults the DPP’s members and the people of Taiwan. Voters will leave the party if such antiquated thinking becomes reality.
Lee Ying-yuan is a former secretary-general of the Democratic Progressive Party.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations