Perhaps because they were never in control of their own destiny over the past several hundred years, most people in Taiwan, regardless of their ancestral origin, suffer from a kind of anxiety: they hope to read their future from subtle clues. Various divinations of lottery numbers and popular TV talk-shows help people shed light on the future This is all the more true when it comes to politics.
The mayoral and council elections in Taipei and Kaohsiung last Saturday have been viewed as a "vote of confidence," the mid-term test and a bellwether for the 2004 presidential election. Now how should we interpret the election results?
The outcome is ostensibly easy to judge. Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) scored a landslide victory in Taipei. Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) won the Kaohsiung mayoralty by a narrow margin. The KMT and the PFP performed well in only one of the city council elections. The TSU suffered a setback, while the New Party made a comeback.
Making political interpretations of these results is not difficult. The Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) government still fails to gain recognition from a majority of constituents, but the KMT's Ma has emerged as a superstar in the pan-blue camp. A showdown between Chen and Ma appears inevitable.
But a noteworthy phenomenon is hidden behind the widely divergent interpretations. The election outcome this time once again reflected the rather stable structure of the electorate.
The DPP garnered 30.3 percent of the votes in Taipei's city council elections in 1998 and 29.8 percent in 1994. Last Saturday, the party secured 28.5 percent of the votes in Taipei. Combined with the TSU's votes, the pan-green camp acquired 32.2 percent, very close to the results of previous elections. In the legislative elections, the DPP received 33.7 percent in Taipei City last year, 35.6 percent in 1998, and 35.5 percent in 1995.
The DPP tends to win more votes in nationwide legislative elections than in city council elections, but there is not much difference between the two. Both legislative and city council elections use a multi-member district system, thereby reflecting the fundamentals of a political party's strength.
On the other hand, how pan-blue parties perform in these elections actually has little bearing on the DPP. Decisive factors include the nomination strategies that the parties employ, and the rise and fall of political forces within the pan-blue camp. For instance, if the KMT and the New Party make a good showing, the PFP is most likely to be affected, and vice versa.
The much discussed mayoral elections are mere additional games within this stable framework. Because there will be only one winner in each of these elections, people often vote strategically according to the candidates' chances. Political parties will also try to find ways to build alliances. Basically, moderates with a solid reputation stand to gain from this strategy, but these candidates may not necessarily be from any particular party.
Chen in 1994 and Ma in Saturday's election are both cases in point. If the moderate candidates are weak (as was the KMT's Thomas Huang (黃大洲) in 1994) and the strong candidates hold relatively radical ideologies (as did Chen and the New Party's Jaw Shau-kung (趙少康) in 1994), middle-of-the-road voters will then shift toward either end of the spectrum.
To begin with, it was not easy for the DPP to benefit from strategic voting or any partisan alliances in this year's election, which occurred within the framework of a grand blue-green faceoff. Besides, Ma adopted a obscurantist campaign strategy, turning the DPP into a target for voters to vent their grievances in general. That Lee's percentage of the vote (35.89 percent) was 7 percentage points higher than the DPP's total vote percentage in the city council elections was no small feat. Hsieh's narrow victory in Kao-hsiung was also based on a similar framework.
Such a framework has to do with the unique situation facing Taiwan. National identity is the prime issue influencing the country's survival. The issue has seeped into the social and economic spheres as economic and trade dependence between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait increases. The DPP holds a clear stance on national identity but lacks strong policies. The party can only try to consolidate its fundamental support base. The pan-blue camp can reap a large number of votes by simply opposing the DPP.
Voters with relatively weak ideological leanings tend to attach importance to performance in governing, but the state of the economy over the past two years makes it difficult for the DPP to make any gain in this regard. To what extent did the DPP's governing ability affect the economy? Or is it an inevitable situation for Taiwan -- a country that has no cutting-edge technology and no more cheap labor -- in a globalized economy? These issues are complex and are beyond the scope of most people's understanding. One therefore has to attribute matters to an aspect that is easier to grasp. That aspect is national identity.
Such a framework is surely not in the DPP's interests, but it should serve as a warning for all parties that aspire to be the ruling party. A split in national identity, combined with a particular electoral system, has almost turned centrifugal competition and intra-party wrangling into normalcy.
Unfortunately, Taiwan has a semi-presidential system, which can hardly cultivate a political culture of alliance-building between parties -- a culture com-mon in countries with multi-party Cabinet systems. Even if some parties cooperate, such cooperation is likely to be based on temporary election agreements.
Such a political framework may not be able to endure the massive impact of globalization. All the political parties stand to face a rigorous ordeal if we do not modify the constitutional government structure and electoral system.
Lin Jih-wen is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica.
Translated by Francis Huang and Jackie Lin
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