Since former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) withdrew from the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential primary, the competition for the party’s presidential nomination has centered on a close race between Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who temporarily stepped down as the party’s chairperson, and former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌).
After both Tsai and Su registered to run for the nomination, several polls conducted by local media showed not only a tight race between the two DPP heavyweights, but also an opportunity for either one of them to unseat President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Though it is too early to predict the result of next year’s presidential election, the Su-Tsai competition for the DPP’s presidential nomination has several political implications.
The first concerns whether both of them can introduce a “gentleman’s game” throughout the primary to avoid a repeat of the disunity that appeared in the 2007 internal competition. At that time, Su and another DPP heavyweight, former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), were pointing fingers at each other without taking into account the unity of the party. Even though Hsieh won the primary and chose Su to be his running mate, they never resolved the rift that resulted from the primary.
Coincidentally, on most occasions, Su and Tsai have failed to see eye to eye since they stepped down as premier and vice premier in 2007. On the one hand, Tsai was able to help the DPP rebound from its devastating losses in the 2008 legislative and presidential elections, and she has gradually rebuilt public support in the party during the past two years. In addition, Su’s sudden announcement early last year that he would run in the Taipei mayoral election, though he had his own justification, also deepened the mistrust between him and Tsai.
Although they have refrained from attacking each other, their competition for the DPP presidential nomination has decreased the chance of a DPP “dream team” — either a Su-Tsai ticket or a Tsai-Su ticket. With bad memories from the previous presidential primaries in mind, both Su and Tsai have been pushing their campaigns away from negative campaigning and toward a focus on their personalities and capabilities. Both of them, as well as the rest of the DPP’s members and supporters, understand perfectly well that it will take tremendous effort to beat Ma even with perfect party unity. However, unseating Ma would definitely be impossible without unity.
The DPP’s internal rules for the presidential primary decide the strategies for both camps. Instead of using a combination of direct voting by party members and public polls, the DPP chose to adopt an open public poll to select its presidential candidate. The new polling system first requires the DPP participant to have a higher leading rate when compared with Ma. If no one can beat Ma, then whoever has more public support wins the nomination. Since it is not an exclusive polling system, the respondents who get telephone calls for the poll could be KMT supporters.
That explains why Su and Tsai have both come up with a moderate approach to appeal to the general public, rather than just pan-green supporters. In fact, in their respective campaigns in last year’s special municipality elections for Taipei and New Taipei City (新北市), Su and Tsai introduced a new campaign style, deviating from the traditional DPP formula. Wearing “pink” shirts, holding concerts, engaging with Internet and Facebook users and portraying their campaigns as capability-driven and candidate-centered rather than partisan-oriented, they displayed the pragmatism and moderation that both leaders intended to bring to Taiwan’s electoral culture.
Finally, Su and Tsai have both acquired impressive political profiles. Su has spent 30 years in politics — a member of the Provincial Assembly, commissioner of Pingtung and Taipei counties, DPP chairman and premier. With a background in international trade and law, Tsai was a chief negotiator and policy adviser for former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). She then acted as Mainland Affairs Council chairwoman and vice premier under the DPP administration.
Therefore, whoever wins the DPP primary will likely continue a moderate campaign to the general election. If Su and Tsai are able to maintain unity in the primary, there is still plenty of opportunity for the DPP dream ticket. Teaming up is only one option among many.
When US President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged each other in an intense Democratic Party primary, Obama later chose Clinton to be in his Cabinet after he won the US presidential election. The DPP should emulate the US Democrats’ demonstration of party unity.
Liu Shih-chung is a senior research fellow at Taiwan Brain Trust.
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