Since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office on May 20, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has lost three local by-elections and forfeited another six. Some might feel that the districts where the party lost or forfeited elections were traditional strongholds of the pan-blue camp. A lot of people seem to have forgotten that in the legislative elections earlier this year, the DPP managed to capture quite a few districts that are usually seen as deep-blue.
One such example is Hualien City — where a DPP candidate just lost a mayoral by-election — where incumbent DPP Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) defeated the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate in January’s election.
In January, voters turned their backs on the KMT’s vote captains because they were fed up with then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), but the new government has failed to provide a fresh approach. Even pan-green supporters are complaining, but they are directing all their ire toward the Cabinet and are leaving Tsai alone.
If this had happened prior to the constitutional amendments that took place in the 1990s that would have been expected, because at the time the premier was the official in charge of domestic policies, while the president was only in charge of national defense and foreign policy. The manner in which then-premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) refused to throw his support behind the personnel changes that then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) wanted makes it clear that there was no direct relationship between the president and how the Cabinet functioned.
The constitutional amendments turned the premier into the president’s chief of staff and allowed the president to shake up the Cabinet when necessary. Now every political appointee takes their orders from the president and if an administration does a bad job, it is the president’s responsibility.
However, after 100 days in office, the Cabinet has attracted heavy criticism, but the president has been almost unscathed and this is very different from what happened during Ma’s administration. The reason for this is that during Ma’s time in office, the pan-green camp attacked both him and the Cabinet, but now, while the pan-blue camp attacks the government, the pan-green camp refrains from attacking Tsai, although it does attack the Cabinet.
Members of the pan-green camp do not dare attack Tsai because of her popular support and it would hurt the person attacking her. This means that even if they are displeased with Tsai, prominent members will not attack her.
The Cabinet is not elected and thus is not mandated by popular support, and so it has come under attack from both the pan-blue and the pan-green camps.
It is interesting to note that during the KMT’s rule, influential pan-blue members supported the Cabinet, while pan-green leaders are now attacking a pan-green Cabinet.
The reason for this difference between influential members of the two camps is that pan-blue leaders can control vote captains and thus have an influence over both elections and policies, and therefore could work seamlessly with the Cabinet. Pan-green leaders have no influence over either elections or policies, and often find themselves in opposition to the Cabinet. Just like the KMT, the DPP election performance is shaped by its political ideology and it relies on vote captains.
However, pan-green leaders have no solid political support from vote captains, and they have even less influence over an election than a village or borough head, so they have no influence over policy.
Chen Mao-hsiung is a retired National Sun Yat-sen University professor and chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Taiwanese Security.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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