Last week, former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) finally announced his bid to represent the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in next year’s presidential election. The announcement came hardly as a surprise, with many viewing a stand-off between him and Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who has temporarily stepped down as DPP chairperson, being inevitable.
What was surprising was former vice president Annette Lu’s (呂秀蓮) announcement that she was not joining the DPP presidential primary — shocking because she had declared early on her intention to stand and then withdrew on the eve of her expected announcement.
Unlike the DPP primary in 2008, the fight between the two main contenders today is expected to be more civil, as nobody wants to see a repeat of the clashes that characterized the previous campaign.
Some people think Tsai does not have a strong image on the national level and are concerned she might find it difficult to attract pan-green voters. Their concerns are unfounded. During the DPP primary in 2008, all of the newly established pro-independence factions rejected former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), and many people thought that this would be his downfall. In the end, it was the party member vote that saved him. The pro-green electorate is concerned mostly with which candidate is strong enough to win the election. With the exception of a very small minority, most pan-green supporters have tired of the Taiwanese independence issue.
There are also those within the pan-green camp who are not happy with the new system this year — decided by the DPP’s National Congress in January — of selecting nominees through a public poll, with no party member vote. They have got it into their heads that the decision was tailor-made for Tsai, to give her the best chance of winning. This betrays a misunderstanding of the facts. Tsai had already been voted in as chairperson of the party twice, each time with an overwhelming number of votes. DPP members and pan-green supporters have high hopes for Tsai and hope that she will be able to lead the party back into government. If the primary was conducted as a party member ballot, she would be the most likely winner.
It would have been very difficult for Tsai to have reached her current position had the DPP won the presidency in 2008. However, disillusioned by allegations of corruption against the DPP, the electorate turned their back on the party. For the pro-green electorate, the politicians at the time had revealed themselves to be flawed, and it was looking for someone untainted and unassociated with that generation of politicians to lead the party forward and divest it of its sullied reputation. Tsai fitted this image and pro-green voters warmed to her.
When Tsai became chairpersonship, her first challenge was how to deal with the hard-core supporters of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). They wanted Tsai to throw the full weight of the party behind Chen, but she would only support him on humanitarian grounds, stopping short of getting involved in the legal proceedings. Her refusal to pander to the demands of the pro-Chen faction meant that her status as DPP chief was rather tenuous. Fortunately, public discontent with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government led to a string of resounding victories for the DPP in several legislative by-elections, shoring up her status. In the end even Chen gave her his approval, meaning that his supporters became better disposed to her.
Getting the various forces within the party behind her was one thing; her next challenge is the pro-blue supporters. Hostile to the DPP, it stands to reason that they would be similarly hostile to its chairperson. National polls, then, will not be particularly kind to Tsai. Su, meanwhile, seems to have avoided the ire of various forces, both within and outside the party.
The reason that Su was able to rate among the 10 most popular politicians at the national level after the 2008 presidential election was that he was canny enough to retreat from the thick of things. This kept him out of the post-election internal squabbles, and when the pro-Chen supporters were laying siege to Tsai, he managed to stay out of the mudslinging between the pro and anti-Chen factions. He has also softened his line, neutralizing some of the bile aimed at him from pan-blue quarters.
Quite a few people in the pan-green camp believe that the DPP primary will be a one-horse race, and regard a Tsai victory as a fait accompli. This conclusion is a tad premature. If the nomination were to be decided by a party member vote, Tsai may well have won with a resounding majority. However, as it is to be done via a popular vote, she could fall foul of votes by pro-blue supporters hostile to the DPP chairperson, conditioned by years of enmity between the DPP and the KMT. The three main pro-KMT newspapers, too, seem to have it in for Tsai, and many political commentators have joined their ranks.
Chen Mao-hsiung is chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Taiwanese Security.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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