King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) recently resigned from his post as secretary-general of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and will be replaced by Presidential Office Secretary-General Liao Liou-yi (廖了以) at the end of this month. Both the pan-blue and pan-green camps know that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will be relying on Liao to restructure the local factions, but it is also general knowledge that King will return to take charge of Ma’s re-election campaign next year. Given that King is a trusted confidant of Ma’s, the reason for his resignation is straightforward: The KMT wants to regroup after a series of setbacks.
Personal relationships are the mainstay of the KMT’s election campaigns and personal relationships lie in the hands of the local factions. The party wins when it is in command of the local factions and vice versa. It stumbled in recent elections not only because people were dissatisfied with the Ma administration, but because the party has lost its control on local ties.
The KMT lost several legislative by-elections, did worse than before in the five special municipality elections and lost even more ground in the city councils. King has been held responsible for the weakened local factions and ensuing failures, and it has been assumed within the pan-blue camp that the KMT would be able to restructure local factions if King stepped down.
King has not been flexible enough when dealing with local factions because he does not have a background in local politics, but he should not be held completely responsible for the factional splits; there are also other factors. In the authoritarian past, it was easy for the KMT to distribute resources through the top-down leadership structure, thereby gaining control over the local factions. This top-down model, however, faced a great challenge after Taiwan’s democratization, which has raised public awareness of democratic values. As a consequence, it was only natural that conflict would arise over resource distribution and factions would become weaker and even dissolve in bigger cities.
In developed democracies, elections depend on the quality of candidates, party image and public policies, and voters are not controlled through personal relationships. Ever since local factions began falling apart, voting behavior in Taiwan has become more like that in more developed democracies rather than being driven by local vote captains. It is only natural that the KMT’s local factions have become weaker. Although the party should be concentrating on the quality of its candidates, image and policies, it keeps relying on its local factions.
King will manage Ma’s re-election campaign because Ma believes him to be an excellent campaigner. King is well versed in handling the media and publicity, which, nevertheless, is not enough to win an election. Without other kinds of support, even the most persuasive campaign literature will be in vain.
Take Ma’s landslide victory in 2008: After the election, the pan-blue camp argued that Ma’s “long-stay” tours around the country contributed the most to his victory. That assumption, however, is a big mistake. The strategy would have succeeded if it had been former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), because citizens considered Chiang an “emperor close to the people.” Ma, however, is seen as just like any member of the public.
Ma did not win the presidential election in 2008 — the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost it. DPP supporters had very high expectations for the party and any small mistake would have caused great damage. When the problems began for former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his family, many supporters turned their backs on him for political reasons, even though no evidence of illegal behavior had yet been found at the time. Because the DPP was closely connected with Chen, it also floundered. Ma would have been unlikely to win if he had challenged Chen in 2004.
The DPP has now cleared itself of its corrupt image and, judging from the judicial cases over the past few years, the KMT appears more corrupt than the DPP. Once the DPP’s image looks cleaner than the KMT’s, those pan-green supporters who refused to support the DPP will return and the KMT will no longer be able to accuse the DPP of being corrupt.
The weakening of the KMT‘s local factions is irreversible. Although Liao has a familiar background with local factions, he will still find it difficult to bring the party back to life. The KMT will gain little if it continues to rely only on King and local factions instead of working to improve the quality of its candidates, political image and policies.
Chen Mao-hsiung is a former professor at National Sun Yat-sen University.
TRANSLATED BY LIU YI-HSIN
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