With former vice president Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) election as the next chairperson of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), might the party be on the comeback trail?
On Saturday last week, KMT members cast their votes to elect a new party leader and Wu won a landslide victory, receiving 144,408 or 52.24 percent of the total votes cast in a six-way race.
The runner-up was KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) who received only 53,063 votes, followed by KMT Vice Chaiman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), a former Taipei mayor, who got 44,301 votes.
The result was a stunning defeat for Hung personally and the policy program she sought to promote. When she won in a by-election to fill the chair vacated by New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) in spring last year, she received 78,829 or 56 percent of the total votes and became the party’s first female leader.
However, she was the wrong person for the job because she lacks the requisite leadership qualities and political experience. Unable to lead, inspire, or manage party affairs, she is obstinate and divisive, and has failed to work with other KMT leaders, local factions and the Legislative Yuan.
Hung has been highly unpopular within and outside the party because of her overt pro-China position, so much so that she was removed as the KMT presidential candidate and replaced by then-party chairman Chu in August 2015.
She did not learn the lesson and, as chairwoman, persisted in advocating acceptance of Beijing’s version of the “one China” principle, the so-called “1992 consensus,” and openly supported Taiwan’s unification with China, in stark contrast to the position taken by other KMT leaders, including Wu.
Under Hung’s stewardship, the KMT adopted a new peace-centered platform in September last year, much to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) liking.
Although Hung is to soon step down as party chair, she retains a pro-China following inside the KMT and remains a constraint on the new leader.
By most accounts, Wu is talented, experienced and polished, one of the few accomplished political actors in Taiwan’s political landscape. He has held elected posts in Taipei and other localities, including Kaohsiung mayor, a member of the Legislative Yuan (representing Nantou County), secretary-general of the KMT, prime minister and vice president.
Throughout his career, Wu has been known to cultivate and maintain friendly connections with the rich and influential in Taiwan, local KMT factions as well as civic groups at the grassroots level. He is truly a rare leader in the KMT who is equipped and qualified to lead the party to recapture political power from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Needless to say, Wu faces severe challenges inside and outside the KMT, as well as from Beijing.
To begin with, he must guide the party to undertake an honest, thorough and painstaking review of the causes behind the KMT’s devastating defeats in 2014 and in last year’s elections. Until now, not a few KMT leaders and ranking cadres remain confused, unwilling or unable to comprehend why and how they lost Taiwan.
As former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) put it in his speech at Cornell University in June 1995: “What the people want is always in my mind.”
In a democracy, the policy platform of the government must be based on popular will; if a government contravenes and acts against people’s wishes and interests, they are sure to rise up and overthrow that government.
During the Sunflower movement and the nine-in-one elections in 2014, people delivered clear warning signals to the KMT government led by then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
They tried to tell Ma that they disapproved of his tilt toward China, they were apprehensive that his excessive dependence on China (through cross-strait economic integration) would fail to revive Taiwan’s struggling economy, but would instead result in Taiwan’s political unification with China. Then, in the elections last year, Taiwanese voted the KMT out of power, enabling the DPP to take over the presidency and the legislative majority.
Wu was Ma’s deputy and part of the problem, so to speak. By now, Wu must have sobered up and come to understand what went wrong.
He should understand that ordinary Taiwanese resent Ma’s pro-China and creeping unification agenda, that they have been alienated by the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement that promotes trade and investment, but actually only enriches a handful of compradors and KMT-friendly business tycoons.
On the other hand, people have suffered from the flight of Taiwanese capital and the relocation of production facilities to China, resulting in unemployment and stagnant wages, especially among young people.
It is imperative that Wu abandons Ma’s failed strategy and counterproductive policies and resets the KMT’s economic and cross-strait strategy.
For the KMT to broaden its base of support and regain political power in the years to come, it must forge a Taiwan-centered ideology, champion a “Taiwan First” policy platform, adopt the name “Taiwan Nationalist Party” to demonstrate that it is a Taiwan-based party and forgo the idea of unification with China, as Ma and Hung have advocated.
Wu must be visionary if he wishes to avert the further decline of the KMT. A party that aspires to make Taiwan a province or a tributary state of China is unlikely to have a future and is likely to be forsaken by Taiwanese.
Ma’s “1992 consensus” or “one China, different interpretations” formula has outlived its usefulness and the new KMT leader should be bold enough to renounce it. Pro-Beijing KMT leaders are sure to oppose Wu’s changes and innovations, and if they refuse to go along, they should be asked to leave the KMT and join the New Party.
Many Taiwanese hope that Wu can remake the KMT into a Taiwan-based party, much like the New Power Party, operating as a loyal opposition party and performing the roles of a critic exercising oversight on the government and contending for power.
If this were the case, Beijing would be denied the opportunity to use a “divide and conquer” strategy toward Taiwan and would no longer be able to play the KMT off against the DPP.
It is time for the KMT and Wu to make a choice.
Parris Chang is professor emeritus of political science at Pennsylvania State University and president of the Taiwan Institute for Political, Economic and Strategic Studies.
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