Wed, Jun 02, 2004 page8

• Missing millions and hard numbers

  • By Jerome Keating
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  Millions are missing, yet no one is concerned. Millions are missing, yet no one accepts responsibility. Millions are missing, yet all seem in denial. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) continue to ignore their missing millions and focus only on 30,000.

  Millions of dollars? No, we're not referring to the missing millions of KMT money, though lower-ranking party members should be concerned with who has been able to buy what, where and why.

  The millions we refer to are votes -- the hard and fast tickets needed to win elections.

  Numbers can be boring but they carry a truth. Percentages are deceptive; numbers don't lie. If only three people vote and I get two of those votes, to say I got 66 percent of the votes is better than saying I got two. So bear with this examination of numbers from the presidential elections of 1996, 2000 and 2004; they are crucial to the questions of accountability, subsequent denial and pathology.

  Besides the admirably high percentage of voter turnout, simple arithmetic shows an increase of 2,148,303 votes cast between 1996 and 2004 (see Table 1). Who benefited? The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) did, but their numbers show an increase far greater than the increase in votes.

  Look at the DPP results (see Table 2). In eight years, the DPP gained 4,197,384 votes.

  What about the KMT figures?

  With two sets of KMT candidates running as independents in 1996, the KMT and its related candidates received a total of 8,491,533 votes (see Table 3) to the DPP's 2,274,586.

  KMT candidate Lien Chan (連戰) and independent candidate James Soong's (宋楚瑜) combined vote in 2000 was 7,590,445 (see Table 4) to the DPP's 4,977,737; but the DPP won because of the split. Other candidates got less than 1 percent, or 91,211 votes. After the election, Soong formed the PFP.

  This year Lien and Soong on a KMT/PFP ticket got 6,442,452 votes to the DPP's 6,471,970.

  These are the cold, hard numbers. In the give and take of eight years (four of which the KMT was in power and four of which it was not), the KMT lost and/or failed to gain approximately 4,197,384 votes. Who, then, was accountable for this?

  In 2000, when Lien ran as the lead man, he took a shellacking. Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) as party chairman took the responsibility for the loss, but Soong's defection from the party was the major cause.

  Still, even if Soong's votes were added to Lien's, the KMT vote total had already dropped by more than 900,000 votes. If the additional 1,890,000 votes cast that year were added in, it would make the loss over 2,790,000.

  Lee took full blame for the losses in 2000, but his responsibility for them is debatable. This year, when Lee could not be blamed, the KMT still dropped another 1,147,993 votes. From where were they lost? From Lien's previous numbers? From Soong's? No one has addressed this matter. Post-election rhetoric has completely avoided this topic and how more than 4 million votes were lost in eight years.

  Accountability has been fogged over with rhetoric.

  What rhetoric have we heard? First, there were the insane theories on how the assassination attempt was fake. Forensics specialist Henry Lee (李昌鈺) blew those out of the water. Then there was the insistence on a recount, because with a victory of only 30,000, surely the DPP had cheated somewhere. The counting however was accurate, and the recount is proving only to be a distraction wasting money and time.

  Then the rhetoric focused on the question of the high number of invalid votes (300,000) -- surely they possessed the number that would give the KMT the win. Again the results were futile, as the greater number of invalid votes favored Chen.

  At this point one would have expected the rhetoric to adjust, but now two months after the election, excuses still come. Lien and Soong insist there is no justice, no truth; they deny their loss.

  When a political party loses over 4 million votes in eight years in addition to losing two elec-tions, it is time for soul-searching, not the blame game. Yet the blame game continues, and the denial begins to take on path-ological proportions.

  KMT history is no stranger to denial. It was over 40 years before the party would admit that the communist bandits on the mainland had won the minds and hearts of the people there. In 1991, the KMT publicly gave up the dream of retaking the mainland. It was almost 50 years before they could admit to and offer a public apology for the slaughter of innocents in the 228 Incident.

  Denial is a pathology fostered by a sense of entitlement and privilege from a past era, when the KMT ruled Taiwan as a one party state.

  It is a colonial pathology; the pathology of waishengren (Mainlanders) that have no sense of localization and look down on the local people. It is a pathology where their presidential candidate this year could only mount a negative campaign with no positive programs or vision for Taiwan.

  It is this pathology that led pro-KMT TV stations to report false election results, pretending Lien and Soong were in the lead. This gave hope to their loyal followers, but finally the inflated 100,000-vote lead could no longer be substantiated by fact. When the real return numbers finally caught up with them in the last hour of reporting, they had to give up the facade. Even then, instead of coming clean, the explanation and response of the leadership was that "we were cheated."

  It is a pathology that, along with the scam of false TV "news" reports, suggests that their pre-election polls were also inflated figures. That could explain why on March 19, before any votes were even cast, KMT leaders were already making excuses that Chen would use the assassination attempt to deny them their due votes.

  Such a pathology of blindly fanatical denial and entitlement also gave birth to speculation that the shooter in the assassination attempt could have been a deranged DPP follower who wanted to guarantee an election.

  This is a pathology that will not face the fact that the KMT Titanic has struck three icebergs with the 2002 legislative elections and the presidential elections in 2000 and this year. Their ship is sinking, yet the captain desperately tells the crew to focus on how the deck chairs should be arranged. "Don't be wimps!" he cries, "The ship is still in good hands. Trust us."

  It is a pathology where the leaders claim they are for democracy only as long as they can win. How similar their rhetoric is to that of China, which claims to be open to discussion and dialogue -- as long as their premise is accepted and their foregone conclusion is reached.

  It is a pathology where KMT/PFP leaders refuse to attend the inauguration ceremonies whenever they are defeated (2000, 2004). In blind denial, hanging above the KMT headquarters building is a huge black banner proclaiming there is no truth, there is no president. Protest rallies are held with no evidence but the claim that the party has been cheated.

  Distract, distract, distract. Somehow with all these claims for truth, they believe that the real truth of the missing 4-million-plus votes will not be discovered.

  Yet the numbers refuse to go away.

  The rest of the world sees it. Some of the young Turks in the party -- the "Blue Hawks," the "567 Alliance" and the "V6" -- see it, and raise a feeble voice. Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) offers himself up as a token step-down sacrifice, but still there is no one with enough clout in the KMT to say, "This is madness. The old guard is beyond hope. Let the captain go down with the doomed ship if he wants. We can build a new ship."

  This is the pathology of a limited number of waishengren, the pathology of the outsider with a sense of superiority who cannot adapt. This pathology is the real reason for the strife in Taiwan. Fortunately, not all waishengren have the same disease.

  We are reminded of the man who has lost his job but cannot admit it to his wife and family. Every morning the man gets dressed as if going to work; he gives assurances to his family, leaves the house and wanders until it is time to go home. So the KMT leadership cannot admit to their members that again, as they had on the mainland, they have lost the hearts of most average voters. Again, they must find a way to distract their followers. They cannot let them see that in eight years over 4 million votes -- one-third of the voting public -- has lost faith in their leadership and abandoned them.

  So the KMT leaders tell their members to keep protesting; the election is not over; it was a razor-thin victory; justice and truth will come; we will find the missing votes somewhere.

  The man tells his family to trust him; he will get a promotion; there is still a bright future. Some of the family still believe him, but for millions the hand has already written on the wall.

  Jerome F. Keating is an author and educator who has lived in Taiwan for 15 years and is co-author of Island in the Stream: A Quick Case Study of Taiwan's Complex History. ?

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