The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) believes itself to be invulnerable, but it has been brought down by corruption and incompetence. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was like a rabbit caught in the headlights after the party’s rout in the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections, though he seems more preoccupied with what his forebears would think than what the results meant for the Taiwanese public.
Suddenly, KMT legislators, who are more accustomed to being voting machines, all have their own ideas about what went wrong: Some are calling for unity; others are starting to want to go it alone.
Those that blame the defeat on the lack of party unity are concentrating their attention on rallying around Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and advising against Ma pursuing a lawsuit against him. However, Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), whose political fortunes are so tied up with Ma, cannot, dare not, let Wang off without a nod from Ma.
The unity faction believes that Ma is chiefly responsible for the decimation of party unity. While abandoning the lawsuit against Wang may enable Ma to avoid another court defeat, it would not eradicate corruption and incompetence within his administration, or solve the structural and power contradictions between Ma’s faction — which rests on the party-state doctrine — and the mainstream popular faction.
The KMT is pathologically opposed to the idea of independence. It stands to reason that a nation needs to be independent, but the Leninist structure of the party over which Ma presides does not countenance independent integrity, independent decisionmaking, or independent behavior.
The KMT only knows how to keep a grip over the party, government, the military, the judiciary, the legislature and the intelligence agencies. What the chairman says, goes.
Ma controls the judiciary and prosecutors. He abused his powers and saw to it that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was locked up. Filled with revenge and retribution, he would not even grant a medical parole to an increasingly ill Chen.
Ma also abused his powers over the wire-tapping saga, embarking on an attempted purge of Wang. Well, throwing Chen behind bars has served its purpose, and will no longer help the KMT’s election prospects.
As far as Wang is concerned, many Taiwanese empathize with him as an outsider, a local boy made good: He is regarded as the figurehead of the pro-localization faction within the party. Ma’s attack on Wang merely served to paint the former as the person responsible for the split within the party.
There are those within the KMT who are asking for Ma to resign both as party chairman and as president in the aftermath of the rout, as he is widely seen to be the main culprit behind the election defeat.
Ma, however, has chosen to remain as the puppet master, only making a gesture by standing down as party chairman.
To save their own skins, KMT legislators are seeking to distance themselves from Ma in droves, announcing that they will do things independently, that they are no longer willing to being mere “yes” men for the executive branch. If this does come to pass, it will be a major step forward for the nation’s democracy.
Taiwan’s democracy will only get stronger if the electorate can choose freely and consign the old party-state mentality to history, thereby promoting an independent legislature and an independent judiciary.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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