Two recent events have had the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) jumping for joy. First, a public opinion poll conducted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for internal reference found that former DPP Taipei County commissioner Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), who is a potential candidate for the same post in year-end elections, had a 36 percentage point lead in voter support over the KMT incumbent, Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋). Second, the DPP got a bigger share of the votes in the legislative by-election in Taipei City’s Da-an District than in previous elections. However, the DPP should not read too much into these glad tidings.
Popularity ratings for Su and Chou are largely based on how the public sees them as individuals, so they don’t necessarily mean that the DPP as a party now commands greater support than the KMT in Taipei County. As for the Da-an by-election, the result was influenced by the poor economic climate and the furor over inflammatory articles posted online by former diplomat Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) under the pseudonym “Fan Lan-chin” (范蘭欽). Both these factors may fade with time, so the Da-an by-election does not signify a big advance for the DPP in Taipei City.
In Taiwan, the most reliable basis for political power is a network of social connections. The KMT had a monopoly on government for decades, so it has a firm grip on local factions and its connections are deeply rooted. The DPP, for its part, has used political ideology to challenge the KMT. The ideological approach worked to the DPP’s advantage under the old system of big constituencies represented by multiple members in the legislature, but it does not work under the new small, single-member constituency system.
Under the rule of late KMT dictators Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), the main demand of the non-KMT opposition was democratization. Once democracy was established, the DPP shifted its policy focus to opposition to China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), seeking to fight the KMT by connecting it with the CCP in people’s minds.
Under martial law, the opposition’s vocal ideological stance was very effective. In those days, news was heavily censored and the public did not have access to true and balanced information. Elections gave the opposition a chance to hit the ruling KMT’s sore spots and overcome its advantage in terms of local connections.
Now, with a democratic system in place, news censorship is no longer an issue. The DPP and its pan-green allies keep pushing their ideology, oblivious to the fact that everyone else is tired of hearing about it. The DPP doesn’t seem to realize that this strategy is spent. The pan-green camp’s highly ideological approach has attracted all those who can be attracted, and those who can’t be attracted won’t be, no matter how loudly the pan-greens proclaim their ideals.
The idea that you can win elections on the basis of political ideology alone is absurdly unrealistic, but the DPP and its allies can’t shake off this delusion. More than seven out of 10 people in Taiwan see themselves as Taiwanese and not Chinese, but these people will not necessarily vote for the DPP. The outcome of elections is decided not by political standpoint alone, but by many other factors, and the most important of them are the quality and connections of the parties and their candidates. In relying too much on ideology, the DPP has overlooked other factors that could help expand its support base.
Many people complain that though they voted for the DPP, when they have a problem, they have to turn to KMT legislators and councilors for help. The DPP’s performance in providing service to constituents is far inferior to that of the KMT. It is true that in normal democratic countries, service to constituents is not the most important aspect of elected representatives’ work. If members of the US Congress wish to be re-elected, they need to show how many bills they have submitted and how many of them were passed by the House of Representatives and Senate. From an American point of view, the relation between Taiwan’s voters and candidates is abnormal. Where DPP politicians have gone wrong is that they forget they are standing for election in Taiwan, not the US.
It is true that the KMT’s powerful connections are based not only on its service to constituents, but also on the fact that it has been in power for such a long time. However, the DPP also enjoyed eight years in power, but it failed in that time to build its network of connections. The KMT’s connections are mostly controlled by the KMT as a party, so they are not lost when one representative is transferred or retires and another candidate stands in his or her place. In the DPP’s case, on the other hand, all connections are in the hands of individual politicians. When a politician leaves, connections break down. When the DPP was in government, many of its former candidates got transferred into civil service posts. As a result, connections they had built up in their localities crumbled away.
When DPP politicians became public officials, their connections were not the only thing they lost. They also lost their affinity with the public. Affinity means voters’ perception that candidates are not far removed from themselves. Government officials have lots of people at their beck and call. Their high status tends to make them haughty and distant from the general public. When DPP officials go back to electoral politics, they find they have lost their competitive edge.
The DPP has not grown deep roots and its social connections are weak. It still relies on ideology alone to win votes. The thing is, a lot of political issues are not created by the DPP itself, but provided by the KMT. The Kuo Kuan-ying/Fan Lan-chin ruckus is a case in point. If the KMT had denounced Kuo’s online articles right from the start, the DPP would have been left standing on the stage without a script.
Chen Mao-hsiung is a professor of electrical engineering at National Sun Yat-sen University.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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