The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will come to power in January and it is expected to be the first time that there has been a transfer of power in the legislature from the pan-blue camp. The DPP is likely to gain half of the seats on its own.
The central government and the legislative majority will be overturned. Over the years, many people have dreamed of this and are looking forward to the day when Taiwan will get rid of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The slogan goes: Unless the KMT falls, Taiwan will never be good at all, but we need to seriously consider what Taiwan should do to get better after the fall of the KMT.
When talking about the party’s fall, most people refer to its fall from its position of power without making a more detailed analysis of what the KMT represents in terms of social structure and foundation.
The local factions that the KMT relied on in the past, together with the central party-state elite and the politically and commercially powerful conglomerates that have developed over the past 10 years or so, have taken control of Taiwan’s political and economic systems, and through the KMT gained control over the central executive power and the legislative majority.
Through patronage, these groups have consolidated their power and economic interests. Of course, thanks to some results from democratization and judicial reform, the KMT’s control of local factions and their organization and mobilization may have been weakened somewhat. The KMT’s fierce internal power struggles have made the conflicts between local factions and the party-state elite even more severe.
However, while this has been going on, there is a group of people who have quietly turned to the DPP without loudly announcing their stance. At the end of last year, during the nine-in-one elections, the KMT was overwhelmed by a new variable: Many of the polls did not take into account young voters, who became a decisive force. Not only did they significantly expand the number of cities and counties governed by the DPP, some of the third-force political parties, such as the Green Party, also won a few city and county councilor seats, thus changing the local political landscape.
Has the foundation for the KMT’s rule and its supporting social structure already changed? It cannot be said with any certainty, but the fact is that this force is not so easily weakened.
How the KMT’s past social and economic support, whether from local factions or from cross-strait political and business consortia, will be made to collapse and prevented from quickly finding another host is the key question that should be asked. It should not be so easily believed that after the DPP comes to power after next year’s elections, local factional political and economic interests will be immediately eliminated. Will powerful cross-strait consortia just give up their interests? If so, where will they go, and how will the DPP deal with and confront them?
In the past, the DPP, a highly heterogeneous party made up of many diverse components, cooperated with local factions and of course consolidated its own system. It naturally had its own representatives and support system to allow it to mediate and coordinate relations between government and business. Embarrassingly, in the DPP, the performance of these people or forces were mixed, sometimes playing a key role, sometimes removing or blocking many important reform items on the agenda and sheltering many vested interests, with the result that many people are unable to decide whether to support or abandon them.
With the aim of giving the DPP an absolute legislative majority and overthrowing the KMT, the public often forgets what is essential: the need to dismantle the structures of self-interest and power. Can we really be content with just repeating the slogans “get rid of the KMT” or “unless the KMT falls, Taiwan will never be good at all?”
Can we happily believe that a transfer of power and a pan-green camp legislative majority will necessarily bring a brighter and better future? Rather than repeating these slogans, we should ask two questions: First, in a future with a new ruling party and legislative majority, who may take over the structures and benefits that we dislike and have vowed to overthrow? Second, how, within civil society, are we going to construct a new system a new political logic strong enough to counterbalance these old structures, interests and politics? These two questions need to be put not only to the DPP, but also to the parties in the third force and to ourselves as Taiwanese.
Lin Fei-fan is a founding member of Taiwan March.
Translated by Clare Lear
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