DPP must not lose
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was originally formed out of an alliance of various figures and groups opposed to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). For anyone to rise to the top within the DPP, they have to demonstrate practical abilities and prove that they can win elections. The party attaches no great importance to any tradition of “generational ethics.”
More importantly, the DPP emphasizes a bottom-up democratic process, not the top-down “conferment system” that typifies the KMT.
For example, when Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) competed in the DPP’s primary vote for the 1994 Taipei mayoral election, Chen, the younger of the two, won the vote based on his abilities and went on to be elected as the capital city’s first DPP mayor.
The 2000 presidential election is another example. One prospective DPP candidate was Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良), a party elder who had aspired to be president since he was a lad and had served as the party’s chairman.
However, the only person in the DPP who had a chance of winning was Chen and that was enough for then-DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄) to change the rules for Chen’s benefit, with no concern for “generational ethics.”
This turned out to be the right strategy when the DPP, with Chen at its head, finally put an end to the KMT’s decades-long one-party rule and achieved Taiwan’s first-ever handover of central government power from one party to another.
The DPP now faces its greatest crisis since it was founded, and the same can be said for Taiwan. On Thursday last week, four elders of the DPP and the independence movement published an open letter urging President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) not to seek re-election next year.
There is no need to get worked up about their letter. All that needs to be done is to stick to the DPP’s traditional democratic procedures by electing the candidate who most people think is the strongest and has the best chance of winning, as reflected by the results of the presidential primary. That is the only way to set aside prejudices and achieve real unity.
For the sake of Taiwan’s future, the DPP cannot afford to lose the presidential election next year. It has to win. Everyone in the pan-green camp agrees about that; members just have somewhat different ideas about how to achieve it. Surely it can be done without attacking one another.
Kuo Chang-feng
New Taipei City
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