The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have distinct procedures for primary contests, but proposals that threaten the selection of candidates for next year’s presidential election have surfaced within both parties.
The KMT plans to circumvent its system to push forward a candidate, while the DPP wants to overturn its to freeze out a candidate. For the KMT, originally an authoritarian party used to wielding arbitrary power, disregarding an established system might be natural, but it is surprising that the DPP, which emerged from the dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) movement and upholds “the rule of law,” would follow in the KMT’s footsteps.
At first, some DPP members proposed invoking the “overriding clause,” which allows the National Party Congress to veto a primary result and the Central Executive Committee to recruit a specific candidate. The clause was intended to eliminate severely flawed candidates, which does not apply to this year’s two candidates.
DPP Chairman Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) has said that it is not a “tyranny clause,” and that it was unlikely to be invoked. Then, the party members formed another plan: to terminate the party primary at tomorrow’s Central Executive Committee meeting. The move would introduce great uncertainty into its nomination process.
The phrase “terminating primaries” strikes a familiar chord. Under then-president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) authoritarian rule, the dangwai movement was growing, and in the 1978 legislative elections, it put considerable pressure on the KMT to lift martial law and return to a constitutional government.
The authoritarian regime did everything it could to eliminate the movement’s influence. When the US severed diplomatic ties with the Chiang regime that year, the KMT used it as an excuse to cancel the elections. The following year, the KMT sparked the Formosa Incident, capturing all of the dangwai leaders in one fell swoop.
Using Chiang’s trick of terminating an election might not be enough. Perhaps the DPP should copy Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and promulgate a “temporary provision,” scrapping term limits for Central Executive Committee members.
The party could use Chiang Kai-shek’s reasoning — the need to fight the threat posed by communist bandits — to justify the move and also accuse pro-unification insiders of coordinating with the enemy.
Unfortunately, the DPP has neither the guts to use authoritarianism nor the magnanimity to hold the primary in compliance with the democratic system.
Many constitutional academics prefer a parliamentary system to a presidential one. The former gains its power from parliament, forming a collegiate system with a collective administration, while the latter concentrates state power in the hands of a president, which could easily give rise to an autocratic ruler.
The US has adopted a presidential system without these concerns, as Americans are good at conforming to an established system. Clearly, a nation that wants stability must nurture the habit of conforming to a system.
In contrast with the US, China exercises arbitrary power. In establishing systems, Taiwan claims to resemble the US, but too many Taiwanese want to move outside the system.
If China is a villain, then Taiwan is a hypocrite.
Chen Mao-hsiung, a retired National Sun Yat-sen University professor, is chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Taiwanese Security.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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