There is little doubt that Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) has developed a political brand for himself, and it is possible that this “Han brand” will persist. His brand value cannot just be measured in the almost 900,000 votes he garnered two years ago, but also in the 5.52 million votes he received in January.
Han won the former election, but lost the latter, and yet his brand remains the most marketable in Taiwanese politics that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has under its umbrella. It remains a viable option for the KMT, even though it did not help Han survive Saturday’s recall vote.
More than 9.13 million votes in favor of his recall surpassed the number of votes he won in the 2018 mayoral election.
The international media interpreted his loss from the perspective of his pro-China stance. For example, the Wall Street Journal ran an article titled “Taiwan Voters Throw China-Friendly Mayor Out of Office.” In this interpretation, the reason for Han’s fall from grace was his policy orientation.
The event was seen quite differently in Taiwan.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that the result served as a warning for all politicians, while KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) expressed remorse, saying that the party had failed to come up to the expectations of the people of Kaohsiung.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who is also chairman of the Taiwan People’s Party, said that politicians would now have to be all the more mindful of the trust invested in them by the electorate.
The consensus in Taiwan was that the blame lay in Han’s performance.
How did Han’s brand came to appeal to his supporters, the “Han fans,” in the first place, and how did it allow him to scuttle out from the KMT and embark upon his meteoric rise?
The first cause was the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration during Tsai’s first term, when it pushed through contentious labor and pension reforms.
The anger stirred up by unpopular policies was the apparent and explicit reason.
However, in the background was Han’s support from the Chinese Communist Party and pro-China elements, such as the huge Internet army it mobilized. Both of these conspired to help Han.
A thorough analysis of the reasons for Han’s rise must take into account a plurality of causes, whose cumulative effect has borne him forward.
Just as rapidly as his star ascended, it started to fade within two short years. If politicians are to learn a lesson from this, biased and selective interpretations have to be put aside.
As far as the DPP is concerned, Tsai knows all too well that just as easily as the electorate can give a politician power, so can it take it away. For this, the party must prove that it can pass muster.
The opposition parties have two other obstacles in their path, above and beyond the challenges the DPP faces.
First, they must overcome the “Han Kuo-yu barrier,” second, they have to deal with the umbilical cord that keeps them trussed to China.
If the parties refuse to change and instead bury their heads into the sand, unable to learn the lesson from Han’s recall vote, they will remain in opposition for the foreseeable future.
The “Han Kuo-yu barrier” is the precedent set by the number of votes Han received in the last presidential election. In the previous election in 2016, then-KMT candidate and former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) only managed to get little more than 3.8 million votes.
Which other KMT-politicians could claim the same amount of clout and influence as Han? Han may be unwashed and somewhat dazed by the recall drubbing, but who in the KMT can counter him, now a liability, when he returns to KMT headquarters?
Will the KMT allow itself to rely on him in the absence of a better option? If it does, it is unlikely that things will go well for it.
The same logic was probably behind Han’s supporters’ hard-nosed rhetoric leading up to the recall vote.
The road Han takes from now on will affect whether the KMT will have the chance to reassert itself in Taiwanese politics.
Cutting the umbilical cord with China is even more of a troublesome issue, and something that leaders and senior figures of many smaller parties are now having to contend with.
The US-China trade dispute has not yet become a big issue in Taiwan, and the Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests have not yet come to a critical point: It is the blowback from the COVID-19 pandemic that started in China that Taiwan must now confront.
The global implications of this crisis have overtaken in importance the more regional issues and have altered the political landscape.
The most pertinent example is the typical “swing voter,” who has become increasingly less meaningful. This is because the percentage of the electorate identifying as Taiwanese, as opposed to having a strong connection to China, has become the majority, even as much as 80 percent.
If politicians watch this trend and still try, as they have done in the past, to appeal to both sides, their options would become increasingly more restricted. The question is, which politician is brave enough to change with the times?
Tzou Jiing-wen is the editor-in-chief of the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper).
Translated by Paul Cooper
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