If the presidential election last month had been conducted along the lines of the Occupy movement and its opposition of the 99 percent who are low and middle-income earners to the 1 percent who are wealthy, or along the lines of the opposition between a local economy and the global economy, then it would not have been very surprising to see big business come out in support of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in response to the piggy bank campaign and the support of small and medium businesses for Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
In early December last year, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) and Delta Electronics Inc chairman Bruce Cheng (鄭崇華) took the lead in announcing support for Ma, but they did not mention the so-called “1992 consensus.” In late December, Formosa Plastics Corp president Wang Wen-yuan (王文淵), who was said to have come under pressure from Beijing, came out in support of the “1992 consensus,” and he was followed by Evergreen Group founder Chang Yung-fa (張榮發).
On Jan. 11, former United Microelectronics Corp chairman John Hsuan (宣明智) said that he represented 128 leaders from companies in the Hsinchu Science Park and traditional and financial industries, in backing Ma and the “1992 consensus,” to avoid opposition from China and to ensure their industries’ survival. On the eve of the election, HTC chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) also said she supported the “1992 consensus.” The result of the election was that Ma defeated Tsai by a 6 percentage point margin, more than either side had expected.
Did the outcome of the election really turn on the “1992 consensus”? This view is echoed even inside the DPP by some who believe it has become necessary to amend the Taiwan independence clause in the party charter and the “1999 Resolution on Taiwan’s Future”, and that the party should take a straight look at the “1992 consensus.”
Beginning in late August last year, the Taiwanese Association for Pacific Ocean Development, led by its chairman, You Ying-lung (游盈隆), began conducting a monthly opinion poll to gauge the political climate. In the final week before the election, it did one last poll. These continuous polls are worth taking a good look at when trying to evaluate the effects of debate over the “1992 consensus” on the outcome of the election. Tsai trailed Ma in all six polls: by 0.7 percentage points in the first one, then 9 percentage points, 7.3 percent percentage points, 4.5 percent percentage points and 9 percent percentage points in subsequent polls, in chronological order, and then 7.4 percent percentage points in the final poll.
The difference was smallest in August, but increased to 9 percentage points in September following a controversy over DPP vice presidential candidate Su Jia-chyuan’s (蘇嘉全) farmhouse. This was before big business threw their support behind the “1992 consensus.” When big business began to weigh in early last month, the difference between Ma and Tsai shrank to 7.4 percentage points. After they intensified their efforts during the last week of campaigning, that difference shrank further, to 6 percentage points on election day, which was quite low compared with the difference in October and November last year.
These polls also showed that only 37 percent disagreed with Tsai’s rejection of the “1992 consensus” in September last year, almost the same as the number of respondents that approved of the rejection, 34.7 percent. They also show that only 28.9 percent approved of Chang’s statement in the last week before the election that “without the ‘1992 consensus,’ Taiwan is done for,” while 48.9 percent disapproved. That is quite a difference.
This shows that the majority view of the “1992 consensus,” an old issue that politicians have been chewing over for 10 years, is different from that of industrial leaders. It also shows that Tsai did not lose any points over the sovereignty issue. The polls give us two clues to Tsai’s loss. One is that there was a lack of trust in her ability to handle cross-strait issues and the other was a problem with policy consistency.
For example, Tsai responded to the view that without the “1992 consensus,” there would never have been any cross-strait trade or Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) by saying that despite the lack of any “consensus,” she managed to push through the “small three links” during her time as chairperson of the Mainland Affairs Council. However, this argument was not compatible with her argument that the ECFA sacrificed Taiwanese sovereignty, and was therefore unconvincing.
The other clue is that, while Tsai was slightly better liked by the public than Ma, social identification with the DPP trailed the KMT, by between 4.6 percent and 9 percent.
If the DPP does not direct its efforts toward these two points, but only wants to change the party charter and adjust its position on sovereignty — an issue that it has already won — it will be trying to cure a pain in its foot by cutting off its head.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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