January’s presidential and legislative elections are less than six months away. While opinion polls show President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) running neck and neck, both the pan-green and pan-blue camps are nervous.
Many believe that Ma can win by a small margin, but the DPP remains hopeful that it will regain power by winning more than half of the legislative seats. However, there is nothing new about pan-green and pan-blue thinking. For voters, regardless of who wins the elections, the victorious party will only be representing half of the Taiwanese public, leaving the other half unsatisfied. So, what should voters do?
A meeting between Ma and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) has recently been frequently mentioned in the news. Many pundits believe the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) can afford to ignore Soong, given his dismal showing at the Taipei mayoral election in 2006, but the way the KMT has treated Soong and the PFP is remarkable: It has turned a potential benefactor into a force of resistance.
If Soong and the PFP looked beyond the pan-green and pan-blue divide, they might experience a resurgence. And if they enlisted younger candidates, around the age of 40, to run in at least 50 constituencies, they would not have to worry about the KMT. And perhaps the best thing they could do is focus their policies on living standards and education.
The DPP and the PFP complement each other: Both parties and their ideologies focus on building key components to the Taiwan discourse. Learning how to coexist peacefully is the key to Taiwan’s future. Diversity and mutual respect are universal values and it is only natural for two political parties to have different ideologies. However, senior members of the two parties should calmly think about what is most beneficial.
It would be beneficial to Taiwan if the DPP could look beyond pan-green and pan-blue thinking and showed goodwill toward Soong, together looking for the greatest common denominators and working hand in hand for the future good of Taiwan. If the two parties formed a strategic alliance in the legislative and presidential elections, the PFP could take care of the constituencies where the pan-green camp is traditionally weaker. If they won the presidential election, they could form a coalition government. They would also be certain to win a legislative majority, which would bring about a new political atmosphere.
Many Taiwanese are weary of the opposition between the pan-blue and pan-green camps. They have learned from the two transitions of government that, regardless of which party is elected, only half of the population will be represented.
Books such as Lung Ying-tai’s (龍應台) Big River, Big Sea — Untold Stories of 1949 and Hwang Kwang-kuo’s (黃光國) The Last Orphan of Asia show that no political party can monopolize the Taiwan discourse.
The KMT and the DPP, the two largest political parties, compete with each other. The KMT and the PFP have gone their separate ways and this has undermined the influence and representative nature of the KMT regime. However, cooperation between the PFP and the DPP seems to be but a fairytale, even though the decisions voters make in the upcoming elections will greatly influence the future of Taiwan.
RSS