It is difficult to think of an issue that has monopolized political commentary as intensely as the recall movement and the autopsy of the July 26 failures. These commentaries have come from diverse sources within Taiwan and abroad, from local Taiwanese members of the public and academics, foreign academics resident in Taiwan, and overseas Taiwanese working in US universities.
There is a lack of consensus that Taiwan’s democracy is either dying in ashes or has become a phoenix rising from the ashes, nurtured into existence by civic groups and rational voters.
There are narratives of extreme polarization and an alarming absence of inter-party trust creating a new phase of politics in Taiwan.
There is nothing new about extreme polarization or dearth of trust.
The roots of the divisions run too deep for the system to be able to right itself. They stretch all the way back to the post-war party-state and dissident dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) movement that rose up in resistance to an authoritarian regime, and which ultimately birthed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Even into the democratic period and the first transition of power to the DPP in 2000, the circumstances of that election led to a governing party absent a legislative majority. The pro-blue bloc of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the newly formed People First Party kept the first non-KMT president, Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), from enacting his agenda.
For evidence of inter-party hatred or absence of trust, one need look no further than the infamous “319 shooting incident,” the alleged assassination attempt against Chen and then-vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) in Tainan on March 19, 2004, one day before the presidential election. Chen and Lu won that election by the slimmest of margins, and KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰), far from expressing shock or calling for tensions to be lowered, accused the DPP of orchestrating the assassination attempt as a stunt to energize a sympathy vote. In what should have been a concession speech, Lien announced the election was rigged and “unfair,” and the KMT bussed supporters up to Ketagalan Avenue for protests in which participants held up signs reading “gangster president” and had images of Chen hanging from a noose.
At the end of his second term, Chen was indicted on corruption charges. In a news conference prior to his detention, Chen said that he believed that then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had ordered his arrest. He was sentenced to 19 years, reduced on appeal from a life sentence, but was granted medical parole on Jan. 5, 2015.
Ma won in 2008 in a landslide. He had a relatively unobstructed run for two terms, and was ultimately brought to heel not by the weakened DPP, but by the student-led Sunflower movement.
The subsequent party transition brought former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to power. Tsai initiated labor and pension reforms with her majority, and then secured a landslide in 2020 that retained the presidency for the DPP and gave the party a sizeable legislative majority, implementing legislation with a relatively free hand, while a disgruntled KMT opposition accused the elected government of leveraging its majority.
Polarization is as old as the formation of the first post-war opposition party, there has never been much love lost between the two sides, and the system only works when the governing party has a clear legislative majority. In a non-normalized Taiwan, politics have always been broken, and only seem to work when the plaster covering the cracks is lathered over thick enough.
It is always non-politicians who rise up to yank the bickering children back into line. The difference now is that the sound of that bickering is drowning out the baying beyond the gates. Some say that there are wolves already inside.
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