Upon taking office as president in 1988, Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) appointed former chief of the general staff and minister of national defense Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) as premier, sparking fears of military interference in the government. Hau later stepped down after he was found to have been holding military meetings at the Executive Yuan despite his position as premier.
It is generally believed that Hau’s appointment as premier was a politically calculated move to take away his clout over the military. Likewise, Lee’s decision to replace then-premier Lee Huan (李煥) with Hau was viewed as a politically motivated move.
In a way, politics is all about nimble maneuvering: Politicians are valued for their resourcefulness when they effectively employ tactics that suit their purposes. That was how politics worked when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) dominated the nation.
When Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) assumed the presidency in 2000, he appointed then-minister of national defense Tang Fei (唐飛) as premier. Tang was a retired air force general and had served as chief of the general staff, in addition to being defense minister.
Some viewed the appointment as a clever move to help the minority government gain further control over the military and stabilize the political situation following the transition of power to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
However, Tang stepped down after discord between him and Chen over the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant project. After all, he was a longstanding member of the KMT. His departure caused some political instability, and it seemed there had been a transition of power in name only.
The KMT’s decades-long party-state rule has left many problems in Taiwanese politics, frustrating those seeking change. The party bureaucracy and the party-state ideology the KMT has inculcated in the military are still causing problems today.
Since 2008, then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) allowed the KMT to operate in a way that is unusual for a democratic country, as the party stuck to its old ways. Ma was merciless when he had a chance to settle old scores with officials from the Chen administration. He exploited the judicial system for his own political interests. Not even Chen could escape his claws: Chen was punished for being president when the position should have gone to a KMT politician.
Ma attacked his political enemies by calling them corrupt, while hiding behind a facade of honesty that he built for himself, although the public never really believed it.
As President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) pushed for judicial reform, her nominees for Judicial Yuan president and vice president met with criticism and objections. While this is the second time a party other than the KMT has been elected to rule Taiwan, Tsai’s recruitment choices are far from refreshing.
Tsai has been accused of allowing too many KMT members to remain in government, amid concern that this could give the KMT an opportunity to take all the credit while leaving the ruling party to shoulder all the blame for any policy missteps.
Why has creating a multiparty system been so difficult? Did the DPP’s landslide victory in the January presidential and legislative elections not indicate that Taiwanese are yearning for something different from the KMT’s troubling rule? Should the allocation of responsibility not change as the ruling party changes?
A lot more is expected of Tsai than what was expected of Chen, since she is governing with a legislative majority and full control over many local governments. A new vision cannot originate from old people in an old political system: There must be change.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
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