The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) replaced its original presidential candidate, Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) — who swore she would rather die than pull out of the race — with Chairman and New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), while Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) was left with a consolation prize.
This left many asking why Wang did not replace Hung. Why did he just receive the consolation prize?
The official answer Chu and his supporters have given to this question is that more people supported his candidacy in the polls.
However, the point of Chu replacing Hung was never about winning the presidency for the KMT, because that is seen by many as a lost cause at this point. The actual point is maintaining the number of legislative seats.
This being the case, would not it be more effective to have Wang run and let Chu continue as mayor?
This is a tricky question for Chu and his team to answer. Everyone knows that Chu received the nomination because President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who would stop at nothing to get Wang out the door, would not agree to having Wang as the party’s presidential candidate.
The deep-blues within the KMT despise Wang’s Taiwan-centric stance, while Hung and her “red-hot blues” hate him even more. This does not leave Wang with many options for getting enough support to become a presidential candidate.
What exactly is Wang’s role in the KMT? Chu says that Wang is a treasure for the party, but then why is it that he is only permitted to carry the sedan chair for other gods and is never allowed to be a leader himself?
Chu is the embodiment of the KMT elite’s mentality, which was revealed in a confidential conversation with former American Institute in Taiwan director Stephen Young, which was reported in WikiLeaks.
Before Ma took office, Young allegedly told Chu that if Ma were to be elected president, the US government would cooperate with him. Chu told Young that this would mean working with Ma, former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起), then-Taichung mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) and Chu himself: a latter-day Gang of Four.
This exclusive club identified by Chu did not include the other sedan chair carriers, former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), Wang or Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義).
Ma has let the KMT decay and today the party is about to be ousted. The so-called “1992 consensus” that Su has admitted making up has been successfully retired and Chu thinks that Wang is a nobody.
Wang was always held up as the leader of the KMT’s Taiwan-centric faction, but that has become synonymous with corrupt local factions. It is also something of a byword for the KMT’s election bribery system: relying on party assets to get elected, supporting the party elite to conquer the world and using the KMT’s legislative majority to prevent any substantive reform.
At this historic moment in time when Taiwanese voters are preparing to overthrow the corrupt and chaotic KMT regime, Wang and his faction do not have any reason to become public enemies. There is no need for him to continue carrying a sedan chair in the KMT parade.
Wang is 74 years old. Since he cannot reform the KMT, he should just leave it. Why would he continue to be willingly vilified by the very people he is carrying around?
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Clare Lear
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