A photograph taken yesterday shows former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) clasping hands outside the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation in Taipei. The picture was meant to be a show of unity.
The men had just emerged from a closed-door meeting to iron out the mechanism by which a joint ticket between Hou, the KMT’s presidential candidate, and Ko, the TPP’s candidate, in a “blue-white alliance” is to be decided. Ma was at the meeting as a witness.
Too much can be read into an image, but the optics do tell a tale.
Chu and Hou, to Ma’s right, are beaming. Their hands are upon each others, and then on Ma’s.
Ko is separated from them, to Ma’s left. His hand is not touching Chu’s or Hou’s, and it appears as if Ma is cajoling Ko to join the handshake.
Ko’s other hand is in a fist. He is barely smiling. If anything, he appears to have an expression of smug recognition that he got what he wanted.
After weeks of stalled talks and a string of stalemates, the two parties agreed on a public poll, with the results to be announced on Saturday.
Although the details are hazy, it seems that a Hou-led ticket is more likely — if the poll results are within the margin of error of other polling — but Ko won the argument on the survey’s format.
On the surface, Ko came out on top because he had little to lose. Hou and Chu might be satisfied when the result is announced, but the KMT’s image and status as the main opposition party, having once been the most powerful party in Taiwan, has been bruised further by this protracted process. It has highlighted intraparty tension and further jeopardized its unity.
The biggest winners were Ma and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as the agreement has boosted the chances that the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, Vice President William Lai (賴清德) — who the CCP calls a “Taiwan independence secessionist” — would be defeated.
Hou’s compromise on a poll to decide the ticket, which he and Chu had vehemently held out against, has Ma’s hand all over it. It was Ko who wanted him to attend after successive rounds of talks had come to nothing.
In pushing KMT-TPP unity, Ma has taken Ko’s side over Hou’s, and by so doing — whether intentionally or not — has created new cracks in the KMT.
It might have been better for the KMT’s integrity and future had it settled for losing the presidency, but improving its power in the legislature — which would have allowed it to maintain its autonomy and dignity.
The emphasis on the alliance and political power for its own sake, without focusing on its principles and policies, has caused tensions within the pan-blue camp, with People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) critical of the alliance for aligning with the TPP instead of approaching his own party.
Soong directed most of his ire at Ma.
While the People First Party might be a spent force, the same might apply to the KMT if the election in January goes poorly for it.
The CCP would not care much either way about the KMT’s fate, as its primary concern is keeping Lai out of the Presidential Office.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has a good reason to avoid a split vote against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in next month’s presidential election. It has been here before and last time things did not go well. Taiwan had its second direct presidential election in 2000 and the nation’s first ever transition of political power, with the KMT in opposition for the first time. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was ushered in with less than 40 percent of the vote, only marginally ahead of James Soong (宋楚瑜), the candidate of the then-newly formed People First Party (PFP), who got almost 37
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