Solidarity has been a popular catchphrase since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) fared poorly in the 2014 nine-in-one elections and then was trounced in last year’s presidential and legislative elections, increasing the gap between the party’s pro-China and pro-localization camps.
However, repeating the word “solidarity” does not make it happen. The KMT’s increasingly competitive race for its May 20 chairpersonship election underscores just how divided the party is.
For a long time, the chairperson race was a game only for those with significant political clout and financial resources, as the party charter sets up formidable thresholds to block younger and less experienced aspirants.
The thresholds — most notably the requirement for the signatures of at least 3 percent of KMT members and a NT$2 million (US$64,635) deposit — are meant to ensure that only hopefuls with strong ties to existing party factions and whose ideals conform to the party’s values stand a chance of being elected.
However, KMT headquarters recently ruled that each chairperson candidate who makes it to the second round must promise to make a NT$10 million annual contribution to the party to help assuage its financial woes in the wake of the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee’s attempt to recover the nation’s stolen assets from the KMT.
The good news is those who lose the election can get that money back.
However, the 3 percent signature requirement has met with resistance from candidates, particularly after allegations last month that KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and some others sought to recruit “nominal party members” to help them meet that threshold.
The allegations have resulted in much finger-pointing among the five candidates, prompting calls for the removal of the signature threshold.
The problems posed by such a threshold were brought to the public’s attention on Sunday, when it was reported that there had been an influx of party membership applicants with suspected organized crime connections, including Wan Shao-cheng (萬少丞).
Wan is a member of a gang who was allegedly responsible for the beating death of off-duty police detective Hsueh Chen-kuo (薛貞國) at a Taipei club in September 2014.
KMT Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said that any attempt to influence election results through recruitment of so-called “dummy party members” is tantamount to cheating and could be severely detrimental to the KMT’s image.
Hau, who is one of the five candidates, also cited recent statistics compiled by the KMT to show that the allegations about new nominal members are not groundless, pointing to an unusual 63 percent increase in the number of new members and those who applied to restore their membership last year from 2015.
“Over the course of last year, the party saw about 16,700 new members or members with restored rights. However, there were nearly 70,000 applications for membership in the first 20 days of this year, excluding former members who applied for membership restoration,” Hau said on Facebook.
As Hau said, based on the assumption that 30,000 people had their membership restored as of Jan. 20, that means the KMT’s membership has increased by 100,000 so far this year, which accounts for about 30 percent of the party’s total number of between 340,000 and 380,000 who are eligible to vote in the May 20 poll.
That number alone is enough to influence the chairpersonship race, Hau said.
Without a fair and inclusive electoral mechanism, party solidarity will forever remain a far-fetched goal and an empty catchphrase for the KMT.
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