At a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) forum to discuss the party’s strategy going into the local mayoral and city councilor elections in November, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) was asked about the party’s plans for the 2024 presidential election. He said that there was no point discussing 2024 unless the party performed well in this year’s elections.
Chu then talked about how the party was being ridiculed as being a “Civil War Party” (內鬥黨), because of how many major KMT figures were “turning their guns inward” and causing internal disarray, when they should be working to build unity within the party and turning their guns outward. While he did not name names, his remarks were largely interpreted as being directed toward Broadcasting Corp of China (中廣) chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康). Chu said he understood why the party had earned the name, and although it was being used as a joke, the reality of the situation had long ago ceased to be a laughing matter.
Asked to respond in an interview, Jaw said he agreed with the chairman. The problem of internal bickering went back a long time and there was little point talking about 2024 if the party was unsuccessful in the local elections, he said. He also cautioned that doing well this year hardly guaranteed victory in 2024, reminding the reporters present of how the party had failed to convert a resounding victory in the 2018 local elections into a return to power in 2020.
Jaw was being evasive, but in so doing he was showing support for Chu, as is normal for politicians affiliated with the same party, by showing unity with their leader even when they are clearly not saying what they mean, in case their words are taken as critical and distract from the issues. In criticizing others for “turning their guns inward,” Chu was actually guilty of the same offense: propagating the party’s fractious culture in the same sentence as he was cautioning against it.
Chu and Jaw are right that infighting and a lack of unity are problematic, but they are certainly not central to the KMT’s electoral woes. Chu noted how the party was hemorrhaging support to Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) Taiwan People’s Party, because it was letting down the KMT’s historical support base, but he blamed its loss of support on how infighting was distracting from the KMT’s recent championing of issues close to the hearts of ordinary Taiwanese, such as inflation, high property prices, low salaries, and the gap between rich and poor. He hopes that if the party can get together behind these issues, it will win back support.
Infighting is not distracting from important issues, rather the issues have been completely buried by the party’s recent high-profile campaigns, which Chu inherited from former KMT chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and continued. Instead of presenting any form of systematic vision that its members can get behind, and which its supporters can believe in, the KMT has insisted on doing little but blame, criticize and obstruct the government, and waste time and money on referendums and recalls, with no discernible vision of its own.
The confused messaging and lack of vision is what has pushed “light blue” supporters into the TPP’s open arms, not the KMT’s lack of unity.
Chu is used to parceling out blame; he seems to have forgotten that he is the party chairman and the buck stops with him. He is deluded about the reason for the KMT’s falling support, and it is astonishing he feels that washing the party’s dirty linen in public could help in securing internal unity.
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