The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leadership were unable to see eye-to-eye with Formosa Alliance convener Kuo Bei-hung (郭倍宏) on the alliance’s anti-annexation demonstration in Taipei on Saturday last week. The DPP suddenly decided to hold its own rally in Kaohsiung on the same day, ostensibly to complement the northern demonstration, while also bolstering DPP Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Chen Chi-mai’s (陳其邁) campaign.
The Kaohsiung event was actually meant to overshadow the alliance’s demonstration.
This show of tensions in the pan-green camp was a gift for pro-unification media, which pointed out that the DPP had left the pro-independence Formosa Alliance adrift.
Two days prior to the rallies, the Sun Yat-sen School held a news conference to claim the alliance was trying to stage a demonstration in favor of an independence referendum, which was boycotted by the DPP.
School president Chang Ya-chung (張亞中) said that the DPP was exploiting Taiwanese independence, and that the pro-independence faction was being treated like an embarrassing cousin, hidden away until after the election was over. It is ironic that pro-unification figures have come out in defense of the pro-independence crowd.
The democracy movement and the Taiwan independence movement are two separate things. The latter wants to overthrow the foreign regime that has installed itself in Taiwan and to establish its own country; the former wishes to resist having an authoritarian government and create a democratic system.
It just so happens that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime under Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) was a foreign, authoritarian regime under the name of the Republic of China (ROC). This ROC was the opponent of the democracy and independence movements.
Today, the DPP inherits the agendas — fighting for democracy and independence — of its founders, who were previously part of the dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) movement.
Initially it was a revolutionary party, a minority wanting to lead the majority to a set of specific objectives. From this emerged the DPP, and Taiwan has moved from an authoritarian regime to having a democratically elected government, with the DPP transforming from a revolutionary party into a democratic one.
The hallmark of a democratic party is that it has to seek out what the majority of the public wants and allocate political resources according to set rules.
During its transformation, pro-independence activists still supported the DPP and, even though it had since lost the character of a revolutionary party, it saw the world with Taiwan at the center and was very much a pro-localization party.
However, the KMT sees a China-centered world in which Taiwan is part of China.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was nurtured in the bosom of a democratic party: It stands to reason that she would pursue mainstream public will via the democratic party model, and allocate political resources accordingly.
The problem is that she made enemies of certain members of the green camp during her first stint as party chair. Now that the DPP is in power, those figures are using the question of national identity to make life difficult for her, which has been exacerbated by public discontent over the politically clumsy way she has handled contentious issues.
Certain pro-independence activists have jumped on the bandwagon, yet the DPP is still trying to find some sort of mainstream consensus and not allowing the minority to dominate.
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 Paul Cooper
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