Mon, Oct 29, 2001 page8

• Editorial: Radicalism threatens democracy

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  The participation of two openly gay candidates in the Dec. 1 legislative elections -- one in Taipei and one in Kaohsiung -- prompts reflection on the likely trajectory of representative politics in Taiwan. Not, we hasten to add, that we have any problem over the likelihood of openly gay candidates being elected to the legislature. After all, statistical probability suggests they will only join the couple of dozen gay legislators who are still firmly in the closet.

  But once again the question is raised of whether Taiwan needs constitutional reform of its legislative election system.

  It is not that we wish to make it harder for openly gay candidates to get elected. But Taiwan's unique combination of multi-member electoral districts and single non-transferable voting displays an increasing tendency toward single-issue radicalism that flies in the face of the kind of consensus-building centralism that is the stuff of modern democratic politics.

  In any modern Western-style democracy, radicalism is seen as something that alienates the centrist swing voters who decide elections and therefore is something to be avoided. If this makes for bland legislatures, it also, by and large, keeps unwholesome points of view -- neo-Nazism and Fascism, for example -- out of mainstream political discourse.

  Taiwan has an electoral system that does just the opposite. It does this by allowing people to be elected with a very small proportion of the overall vote. In the larger electoral districts it is quite easy to be elected with only 4 percent of the total votes cast. Readers who don't see a problem here should ask themselves what is easier: persuading four people in 10 as to the strength of your candidacy, or four people in 100?

  As vote-buying becomes both less effective and more dangerous, people are looking for new ways to get elected. In this situation radicalism works.

  Take for example our bete noire, the New Party's Elmer Feng (馮滬祥). Because Feng represents a ultra-reactionary point of view he is usually not seen as a harbinger of a new kind of legislative politics. But while his avowal of immediate reunification and his conscientious work on behalf of Beijing are extremely marginal positions, his extremism can find 40,000 bitter, marginalized Taiwan-hating mainlanders out of the 1.5 million voters in Taipei South to get him elected. His appeal to a very small, highly unrepresentative minority gets him elected again and again.

  The point here is that the ability to get elected by appealing to -- or buying, for that matter -- a very small group is one of the distinguishing features of Taiwan's electoral system. Though only the politically conservative seem to have exploited it so far, the potential for more candidacies appealing not to a broad mass of voters but to a particularly angry minority is huge. Openly gay candidates were obviously the next step.

  There is nothing wrong with that. But one has to worry about an electoral system that, if not changed, will over the next decade return an increasing number of legislators elected on minority-issue or special-interest tickets, whose jobs depend far more on their visibly championing those issues from their legislative soapbox than in the often stupendously dull work of passing budgets and reviewing legislation that is a lawmaker's lot. One thing that most people agree on, irrespective of political leaning, is that Taiwan's politics need to become more consensual. Yet the election system will prevent this from happening.

  The obvious solution to this is to redraw Taiwan's electoral districts into single member constituencies. Let people win seats who can win a majority of an albeit smaller vote. This will produce a tendency toward middle of the road politics which will facilitate consensus-building. In unity, we are told lies strength. So why perpetuate a system which is likely to result in greater disunity and greater weakness. This is something that Taiwan cannot afford.

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