Former legislator-at-large Kolas Yotaka has spoken out on numerous occasions about Taiwan’s electoral system for indigenous candidates and constituents. Despite living in Taipei’s Daan District (大安), she is not eligible to stand as a general legislative candidate in her area due to her indigenous status, which exemplifies the paradoxical situation in which indigenous Taiwanese all too often find themselves. Policies meant to offer protections in reality become limitations that only further deprive those in the community of their rights.
Indigenous legislative constituencies function differently across government levels. While representatives in mountain townships do not necessarily have to hold indigenous status, their mayors do. At the county level, there is a minimum for indigenous councilors and only those officially recognized as indigenous have the right to run or vote in those elections.
To truly protect indigenous political participation rights, a model closer to the school list system should be implemented, in which indigenous enrollment quotas act as a minimum safeguard, not a hard cap. Indigenous Taiwanese should be able to run as candidates and vote in the general electoral roll without renouncing their indigenous status — and all of the welfare benefits associated with it.
A further issue is the crude distinction drawn between “mountains” and “plains” indigenous groups, with separate voting and candidate pools for seats in each category. Originally a colonial concept, the classification system was brought into law when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) first arrived in Taiwan. Today, the reality is that indigenous Taiwanese live all across the country, so drawing a line between plains and mountainous identities and constituencies is meaningless and restrictive. As such, a single, unified indigenous classification should be adopted instead.
Chen Chi-nung is the principal of a junior-high school in Nantou County.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
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