President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) faces a leadership crisis and friction within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) following the party’s defeat in the Yunlin legislative by-election as he prepares to take over the party chairmanship on Oct. 17, political analysts say.
The Yunlin by-election was the KMT’s second loss this year, following its defeat in the Miaoli legislative election in March. It did, however, win a by-election in Taipei City’s Da-an District.
Clouding Ma’s horizon is the Nantou legislative by-election and the year-end local elections, both scheduled for December. Registration for the local elections opens today and closes on Friday.
The jockeying for KMT backing in the local races has laid bare the power struggle among local factions. A split is anticipated in Yunlin, Hualien, Taitung, Hsinchu, Chiayi and Nantou. In Yilan, Taoyuan, Penghu and Kinmen, KMT candidates are likely to face defiant members of their own party.
Analysts say the big question is whether Ma has the crisis management skills to serve concurrently as president and party leader, and whether he can ignore the clout of local factions.
Political commentator Chung Nien-huang (鍾年晃) said it was unfair to force taxpayers to fund the three by-elections this year because all three were called to deal with the aftermath of errors caused by winning KMT candidates, including vote-buying and dual citizenship.
Chung said the electoral code should be amended to ensure that by-elections are either paid for by the political party of the disgraced politician or banning the party in question from nominating another candidate to run in the by-election. Another option would be to let the candidate who won the second-highest number of votes in the original election be allowed to take the seat instead of holding a by-election.
Aside from Miaoli and Yunlin, other KMT legislators convicted of vote-buying included Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井) of Taoyuan County and Chiang Lien-fu (江連福) of Taichung County.
Lin Cheng-er (林正二), an Aboriginal legislator from the People First Party, is also embroiled in a vote-buying case.
While Ma appears determined to reform the KMT by nominating candidates without close relationships with local factions, Chung said the KMT should return party assets stolen from the nation to the treasury if Ma was serious about reforming the KMT.
Ma, however, was unlikely to shake off the sway of local factions, Chung said.
Taking the Yunlin by-election as an example, Chung said that although the KMT candidate, Chang Ken-hui (張艮輝), was an academic with seemingly a better image, his campaign team was led by former Yunlin County commissioner Chang Jung-wei (張榮味), who was suspected of buying votes.
“To reform does not mean to only nominate somebody with a better image,” Chung said. “It is still cheating if the candidate’s campaign team uses tactics such as buying votes, offering free meals and treating voters to free trips.”
It’s unfair for Ma to capitalize on the factions when he needs their help only to brand them as “black gold” when he wants to retool his personal image, Chung said.
“The Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] has factions too, but factionism does not necessarily mean ‘black gold,’” he said. “When Ma draws a parallel between factions and ‘black gold,’ he must brace himself for repercussions.”
Chung said the KMT’s defeat in Yunlin was more a public backlash against Ma’s “incompetence” than the result of party division.
It was too early to tell whether the KMT defeats in the Yunlin election and Penghu’s casino referendum would have a domino effect, but “the situation is definitely developing in such a direction that is unfavorable to the KMT,” he said.
Ma will eventually back away from confronting local factions because no party can afford to lose the county commissioner and mayoral elections, which are a litmus test for the next presidential election, Chung said.
“To win the December elections and next year’s special municipalities elections, Ma will do whatever he can, because it concerns his re-election bid in 2012,” he said.
Joseph Tsai (蔡榮祥), a political science professor at National Chung Cheng University said Ma faces a dilemma.
“He has to distance himself from factions, but he must also form an alliance with them to secure election victory,” Tsai said. “But he will never allow anything, including his reform campaign, to get in the way of his re-election bid.”
Tsai said Ma did not have a choice of distancing himself from local factions, at least not overnight and not when his approval rating was low.
Refering to the Yulin election, Tsai said the KMT’s Chang Ken-hui was supported by a local faction led by Chang Jung-wei.
Tsai said it was hard to say whether the KMT defeats in the by-elections would carry over to the December elections because every election is different. However, those candidates who don’t have the backing of local factions would only “hand over their election victory on a silver platter.”
Ma was bound to suffer “labor pains” on his way to reform, but was likely to use the resources at his disposal to pacify party dissidents, Tsai said.
Liao Da-chi (廖達琪), director of the Institute of Political Science at National Sun Yat-sen University, said compromise and division of spoils were the name of the game of politics.
“Ma might just as well go back to teaching if he is not into the spoils system or local factions,” she said. “Reform has never been easy. Former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) also made a lot of compromises during their presidencies to get things done.”
It would be “impractical” for Ma to draw a clear line with factions, Liao said, because it would invite an adverse reaction. To pull off a successful campaign, Ma must fine-tune his skills, she said.
Ma faces a challenge in trying to convince “clean” candidates to run and placate their challengers, she said.
Liao agreed that it was too early to say if the Yunlin and Miaoli by-elections would have a domino effect on the year-end elections.
However, if the Ma administration continues to disappoint the public and the KMT is not careful with its campaign strategy, it is likely to suffer a landslide defeat in December, given the lackluster performances of the KMT-governed counties and cities, she said.
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