President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) probably does not understand that he only has seven months left of his political life. When the results of the seven-in-one local elections on Nov. 29 come out, that will be the beginning of the end of his power within the party.
For a lame-duck president with a popular support of only 9 percent, his control of the party is the means that allows him control of the legislature and electoral resources enabling him to consolidate his hold on executive power. One can only guess what the loss of this crutch will mean to Ma.
Why will the year-end elections be a watershed forcing the different factions to reveal their cards? This has to do with the distribution of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) political elites in the special municipalities, in the counties and county-level cities and in the legislature.
The seven-in-one elections will determine who in the next generation of potential KMT leaders will have to step down and who will be given another four years in office. Before the elections, they still fear the party chairman, who controls resources and must be mindful of what they say, but once the elections are over, their unease disappears.
While Ma is to have only another one-and-a-half years in office, life for the legislators who remain in office will go on and they will not allow Ma to drag them down with him.
When the different factions begin to make themselves heard, the legislature will begin to come unstuck. The fact is that Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) have already said that if the KMT does badly in the year-end elections, the chairman will have to step down, giving us a hint at what might come to pass.
If they really understand the difficult situation they are in, the only way out for Ma and his advisers is to let go of their egos, limitations and blind spots.
This includes the party reforms that Ma initiated on April 14, when he said that the three areas in which the party must improve are organization, information and new media, thus managing to completely miss the point because this focuses on trivial detail while avoiding earnest self-reflection.
It also includes their own agenda and calculations, which include forcing through the cross-strait service trade agreement, pushing for a trade in goods agreement, an exchange of cross-strait liaison offices, and a meeting between Ma and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
All these issues lead to clashes between generations and will not win the public’s blessing as they lead to a dead end. No matter how hard they work at their calculations, the result will not spell “historic legacy.” It is time to admit their mistakes.
This is not to say that Ma’s political death sentence is final.
If he can change his approach and make good use of the next seven months, he still has a chance of a comeback. That would mean shelving the highly contentious cross-strait issue, instead focusing on building consensus and initiating constitutional and systemic reform in order to come up with a design that will solve the problems facing Taiwanese democracy.
In fact, three of the four demands of the student movement are the results of concerns over China.
The civic constitutional conference is a solution proposed by civil society, and lawyer C.V. Chen (陳長文) and others who are deemed acceptable by the government have also called on the government to end the deadlock.
Since people from all sectors have noticed the problems created by the constitutional amendments of the past, and since Ma will no longer enjoy the perks of power come 2016, he could side with the public and initiate constitutional reform rather than try to further expand the power of his successor, thus improving his own reputation.
A new round of constitutional amendments considering both the international environment and domestic integration could focus on discussing root and branch systemic reform of the central government.
Whether a presidential, Cabinet or semi-presidential system, it must include equality of responsibilities and a separation of powers.
Furthermore, consideration should also be given to aspects of the election of the legislature, such as whether the German version of the mixed-member proportional representation electoral system should be considered instead of Taiwan’s current single-member district, double-ballot system.
It should also be considered if the proportional representation and distribution of constituency seats should be rethought and the allotment of proportional representation to political parties should be adjusted.
These are all issues that must be addressed to improve the representativeness of the legislature, to solve the problem that every ballot does not have the same value and to establish fair rules for the game.
These issues do not deal with national status or the division over unification and independence, and they are issues that Ma is familiar with.
As long as he can abandon narrow party interests and instead consider the country’s long-term well-being, there is no reason why he should not be able to rack up a few achievements.
In terms of political strategy, as long as the government is willing to invite people from all sectors to discuss and plan constitutional reform, Ma could reclaim the position as head of the nation’s state instead of merely being considered KMT chairman.
The party challenges he is facing would then be separated from the year-end elections. He would also be able to transform the opposition between him and the opposition parties on the one hand and civil society on the other into a relationship of cooperation and friendly competition.
By turning the time up to the end of his term in 2016 into a period for constitutional reform, he could kill several birds with one stone.
Taiwan’s future can only be decided by the nation’s 23 million people. Any individual attempts to change this will only result in continued and expanded public protest, and that could even disrupt government operations.
Everyone is aware that this is the bottom line. Now we are only waiting for Ma to also realize this and for him to change his ways and stand on the side of the public, and of reform.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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