Most academic and journalistic analyses of modern Taiwan politics focus on political parties. How many seats will the DPP, KMT, PFP, TSU and New Party win in the new legislature? How will the parties' distribution of seats affect a post-election coalition? Such questions assume that party politics have gained great importance in Taiwan's politics.
Despite the rise of the DPP, I would argue that the decline of the formerly quasi-Leninist KMT has actually led to the reduced importance of political parties in Taiwan.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
We can gain a sense of this change by considering the defections of key former KMT leaders such as as Hau Pei-tsun (
If a party is declining in importance at the central level, it it even less important at local levels.
Two recent field studies during August and September and during the current campaign in Chiayi County confirm that factions-and not parties-are the crucial factor in structuring voter behavior.
Some may argue that Chiayi County is different, but factions-and not party still remain the key organizing structures for campaigns in much of Taiwan.
In Kaohsiung County, for example, the Black Faction united with the DPP, but the Red and White factions have continued to contest elections against each other as well as the Black.
One cannot begin to explain the recent twists and turns in the "pan-blue" camp unless one realizes that county executive candidate Wu Kuang-hsun (
Even the PFP is split in Kaohsiung County. James Soong follows one PFP legislative candidate in supporting Huang while another PFP legislative candidate supports Wu.
Chiayi County provides an interesting, if complicated, example of the importance of factions as opposed to parties. Of the 15 candidates -- five running for county executive and 10 for the legislative -- fully two-thirds-have changed their party affiliation since the last legislative election three years ago. And the two most prominent KMT candidates neglect to mention their KMT affiliation in their campaign literature.
To understand Chiayi County politics, one must start with its three factions: the large Huang (
The Hsiao family squad, which has a reputation of being one of the "blackest" political forces in Taiwan, has more recently gained influence with three powerful brothers. One, the Chiayi Municipality Assembly Speaker, died earlier this year. A second brother, Hsiao Teng-piao (
The Huang faction has maintained dominance in Chiayi County for the past 12 years. Li Ya-ching (
The KMT nominated a current legislator, Weng Chung-chun (
The KMT used national leaders to convince Li Ya-ching to run under the KMT banner and "drafted" (
During that campaign, Li Ya-ching sued Ho Chia-jung for libel and won his case. At the time of his DPP nomination earlier this year, many people expressed concern that Ho's appeal would prove unsuccessful and he would be disqualified from office. This would have left the DPP without a candidate.
At the same time, a current legislator who was elected as a KMT candidate in 1998, Chen Ming-wen (
According to Chen Ming-wen, as a KMT legislator, he had signed the petition to impeach President Chen Shui-bian (
When President Chen Shui-bian visited Chiayi in early September this year, both Ho Chia-jung and Cheng Ming-wen jockeyed for position to be seen next to the president, and newspapers photos showed one on each side. Apparently under considerable pressure from the presidential office, Ho Chia-jung and Cheng Ming-wen agreed to have a public opinion poll to discover who was more popular. They agreed the loser would withdraw in favor of the winner.
Ho Chia-jung had won some earlier polls and was confident he would win. He hoped to combine the power of the DPP and the Lin faction. Since the Lin faction has less power than the Huang faction, Chen Ming-wen similarly hoped to add DPP votes to his Lin faction support base. In the lead-up to the public opinion poll, Chen Ming-wen supporters made calls throughout the county and Chen won the poll by 4 percent.
Two days later, Ho Chia-jung was forced from the race by the failure of his court appeal, his need to serve a prison sentence and his consequent disqualification from office. The DPP "drafted" Cheng Ming-wen, who is happily using his DPP affiliation of two months in his campaign. For the legislature, the DPP nominated two candidates. Although his father was a famous Huang faction leader who served as a KMT Chiayi County Speaker in the 1970s, Tsai Chi-fang (
The DPP nominated a faithful aide to Ho Chia-jung, Ho Chin-sung (
In addition to KMT candidate Weng Chung-chun and DPP candidate Chen Ming-wen, three additional people registered candidacies for county executive. Li Ming-hsien (
Both of the other candidates have been expelled from the KMT. One, a former county education bureau chief angry about his treatment during the nomination process, wanted to hurt the Huang faction candidacy. The other, a township executive, apparently just likes politics. Neither will receive many votes.
The situation in the legislative election, with 10 candidates running for four positions is more complicated, but also indicates the unimportance of party identification. Li Ya-ching, the Huang faction leader who left the KMT and returned after being beseeched, should win the greatest number of votes. Tsai Chi-fang, the long-term DPP member, should come in second. The probable third winner is Chang Hua-kuan (
The prosecutors asked Ho Chia-jung to report for imprisonment on Dec. 3, after the election. He has decided to report for prison today, just before the election and he and his wife are running a three day procession through all parts of Chiayi County culminating in his entry to prison in an effort to seek sympathy votes for Chang Chun-mei's campaign.
The cynics say he had already paid his vote captains (
To finish the story, the PFP legislative candidate is a former KMT county executive who recently left the KMT, while the TSU candidate formerly belonged to the DPP. He states that he ran against the DPP candidate in 1998 at the request of Peng Min-min(
There are three key factors. First, political science stresses the importance of parties. The largely Western-trained political scientists and journalists naturally look to familiar analyses. Ironically, political parties in the US, the Western model most used by Taiwan academics and journalists, are relatively weak when compared with other western, democratic examples. Taiwan's political parties, despite their quasi-Leninist heritage, are even weaker.
Second, all of the key parties stress their own importance. Even in the authoritarian 1970s, the KMT stressed its importance despite its weakness at local levels. Taiwan's parties sometimes urge voters to cast ballots on the basis of party platforms and nominations, but Taiwan's voters still tend to vote for the candidate rather than the party. And, in many areas of Taiwan outside of Taipei Municipality, "voting for the person" (
Third, many leading Taiwan academics and journalists live in Taipei, the city on which many foreign observers also focus.
Taipei, consisting mainly of relatively educated and affluent immigrants from the China and also other parts of Taiwan, is very different from the rest of the island and its politics also differ greatly.
Taipei Municipality voters have long rejected most aspects of machine politics and, to a greater degree than other parts of Taiwan, do vote for party nominees. However, even Taipei voters often swing between parties because their desire to support particular candidates is stronger than their wish to support a particular party.
The ease with which Taiwan's politicians shift party allegiance suggests that the total number of seats won by each party on Saturday will at best be a preliminary indication of the post-election political arrangements. Substantial political bargaining will commence on Sunday, if not before, and major shifts in party allegiances may take place. The "pan-green" coalition will have the advantage in that it will have first chance to form the Cabinet and with that political power will come the opportunity to offer incentives to legislators to join the winning coalition. I anticipate that a sufficient number of newly-elected legislators will find such a prospect attractive and that President Chen Shui-bian will be able to form his "cross-party coalition for national stability."
Bruce Jacobs (家博) is professor of Asian Languages and Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His writings on Taiwan include Local Politics in a Rural Chinese Cultural Setting: A Field Study of `Mazu' Township, Taiwan (1980), a book he is currently updating to analyze Taiwan's transition to democracy at the local level.
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