In his new book, Taiwan’s Presidential Elections, Japanese political scientist Yoshiyuki Ogasawara writes that the 1996 presidential election was a turning point in Taiwan’s transition to democracy, marking a departure from the long-held assumption of the existence of “one China.” Taiwanese were waking to the idea that holding presidential elections meant Taiwan must be a sovereign nation.
He writes about the clash of mutually exclusive assumptions in Taiwanese-style democracy, including the idea that power lay in the hands of the electorate, but that the government was responsible for addressing problems and should do so immediately.
He also writes that Taiwanese are always looking for a safety valve through which to vent their concerns and frustrations.
Taiwanese vote for officials from borough wardens all the way up to the president, and the electorate in territories actually governed by the Republic of China (ROC) has formed a “voting collective” in a process similar to Taiwan New Century Foundation chairman Chen Lung-chu’s (陳隆志) idea of “an evolution to independence.”
However, the journey has been a long one from the Japanese colonial era city and township councilor elections in 1935, when half were elected by Taiwanese and the other half appointed by prefecture governors, and when suffrage was extended only to men aged 25 or older who had paid a tax of ￥5 (US$0.05 at the current exchange rate) or more.
In the post-war period, the only direct elections were at the local level and it was not until the 1970s when regular supplementary elections were held for the National Assembly and Legislative Yuan at the national level.
Taiwanese cast votes in their droves for the victims — and the lawyers who represented them — of the Kaohsiung Incident, an event then still fresh in the public memory that led directly to the lifting of the ban on forming political parties, making way for the democracy movement.
However, elections during the Martial Law era were not entirely devoid of positives.
The Chinese academic and philosopher Hu Shih (胡適) once used them to differentiate Taiwan from China and the Soviet Union. Hu refuted points made in a June 29, 1954, article by former Taiwan provincial governor Wu Kuo-chen (吳國楨) published in the US in Look magazine titled: “Your Money has Built a Police State in Formosa.”
Hu defended the ROC government, citing elections for Taipei and Chiayi City, in which the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates were defeated by non-KMT candidates. These results were also used by the New York Times and the Hong Kong Times as evidence that Taiwan had free elections.
However, it was also widely known that Taiwan under martial law not only banned political parties outside of the KMT, but also lacked freedom of the press, and that during elections voting stations would occasionally suffer “power cuts” when the votes were being counted. Non-KMT victories were few and far between, and then only because of the persistence of upstanding individuals fighting the good fight.
This year is the 40th anniversary of the Kaohsiung Incident. It was the political vision of the dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) movement that at the time sought a return to the Constitution — the lifting of martial law and the ban on political parties, as well as the abolition of the National Assembly.
Although Taiwanese still have the Constitution, it has been amended by former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), which has forged the collective sense of a sovereign nation among the residents of Taiwan and the outlying islands.
Chen Yi-shen is president of Academia Historica.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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