The financial irregularities linked to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) complicated the attempt during last Saturday’s rally in Taipei organized by pro-localization groups to highlight the poor performance of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his administration during their first 100 days in office.
It should only have been natural that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) participated in the mobilization of the opposition in the first pan-green demonstration aimed at supervising the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration. The Chen scandal, however, has a direct bearing on the DPP’s founding values and the core beliefs of its supporters, which hurt the DPP from within and hurt identification with the party. Evaluating the situation outside the DPP and refocusing support within the party and from the general public are two complicated problems the DPP must now resolve.
However, with the inflexible blue-green division, people either criticize Ma and support Chen or vice versa. Given this skewed public debate and the government’s confusing role, the issue is considered in the context of the KMT and the DPP’s respective positions. Therefore, any confrontation between them is frequently interpreted as a life-and-death struggle, as if there were no middle ground open to discussion. The DPP is consequently walking a tightrope between provoking Ma and supporting Chen.
Amid a series of failed economic policy promises, a system of political patronage, inconsistent ministerial directions and frequent apologies by politicians, the recent remarks on a political talk show by Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) have pushed local “media politics” to new heights.
But a country cannot be run by making insubstantial statements, so when routine remarks are given more weight than bureaucratic expertise, it is a sign that the governing team is unstable and not ready to rule the country. This is evidenced by the Ma administration’s declining approval ratings.
This downward trend has confounded the expectations and prognoses of many political observers and stanched the dejection and disappointment among DPP supporters, waking them up to the differences between KMT and DPP rule. If this is the external situation, then DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) efforts to lead the party away from the influences of Chen and the other heavyweights, and to leave election defeats behind and rebuild the party’s pragmatism and rationalism, are convincing DPP supporters that a return to power is not such a distant goal.
However, the media’s intense coverage of the Chen affair and the political maneuvering of the Ma administration and KMT legislators has equated Chen’s fate with that of the DPP. This has once again awakened DPP supporters’ memories of the authoritarian party-state regime, sparking fears of renewed persecution.
Furthermore, Ma’s accelerated inclination toward China and abandonment of Taiwanese consciousness has opened new doors for DPP fundamentalists and given them more ammunition against the KMT. This means that there are more obstacles to party integration than expected.
Standing on the fine line between underlining the poor performance of the Ma administration and returning to fundamentalism, the DPP might fall victim to the party’s unclear stance about Chen before it gets a chance to take this opportunity to highlight the government’s poor performance.
Over the last eight years, the DPP has come under the individual control of a few people because Chen had assumed the role of consolidating and allocating the party’s social resources. However, the DPP cannot sit idly by as the system of clientelism prevalent during the past authoritarian party-state era spreads within the DPP, resulting in an excessive reliance on resources while it forgets ideals and reality just because Chen is trying to survive a difficult situation.
Among the participants in Saturday’s rally, those who were disappointed in the government outnumbered the Chen supporters. The DPP should take a careful look at the ideas of these two groups. The high degree of political polarization over the past eight years has forced the Ma administration to deal with a failure to honor its campaign promises and the resulting collapse in public trust and increasingly unstable political situation. In order to open the state coffers to benefit voters and to control internal factions, the government has restored clientelism. This is a good contrast to the DPP’s days in power.
The DPP should have simplified the goals of the rally and drawn a clear line between party politics and Chen. This would have offered an opportunity to avoid continued political strife between the government and the opposition. After all, Chen has left office and must be held legally accountable for whatever he has done.
At the same time, Taiwan must continue to move forward despite the ups and downs of the global economy. It should leave the tightrope and return to rational, pragmatic and professional political supervision of the Ma administration. Isn’t this the road that Tsai has proposed for bringing the DPP back into government?
Liu Dsih-chi is an associate professor of international business at Asia University.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG
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