Taiwan in Time: March. 21 to March. 27
It was supposed to be a step toward democracy when the Republic of China (ROC) held general elections for the first National Assembly in 1947.
Although the Japanese government in Taiwan allowed direct elections of a limited number of local officials in 1935 and 1939, strict criteria severely limited the number of eligible voters and they are not considered true general elections.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
The public elected township, town and city representatives in 1946, but the first time that Taiwanese participated in direct national elections were in November 1947 when the ROC, which then included both China and Taiwan, held public elections for the first National Assembly.
Historian Lee Nan-hai (李南海) writes in his book, A Study on the National Assembly Elections of 1947 (民國36年行憲國民大會代表選舉之研究), that Taiwanese officials such as then-Taipei mayor Yu Mi-chien (游彌堅) strongly encouraged people to vote, stating that citizens should “vote according to [the candidate’s] virtue and ability,” and reminded them not to “give up their right to vote, otherwise the election would not reflect the true opinions of the people.”
While several political parties fielded candidates, the dominant Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) claimed an overwhelming majority of available seats, especially since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) refused to participate.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
In April 1948, the assembly elected KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) president, by giving him about 90 percent of the vote.
The 1947 elections were considered a first step toward democracy — but it all stopped there. The original idea was for the assembly to be directly elected every six years — upon which the new assembly would elect the new president — but that would not happen for another 44 years.
In 1949, the KMT retreated to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War, and just a little over one-third of the assembly was present in Taiwan as of August 1950. Since the KMT insisted that it still ruled China, any national assembly election would have to involve candidates and voters living in CCP territory.
In September 1953, Chiang wrote in a telegram to national assembly secretary-general Hung Lan-yu (洪蘭友), “Since the entire mainland is occupied by communist bandits, our voters there cannot vote … and we cannot proceed with the elections for the second national assembly.”
“Article 28.2 in the constitution states that the term of each assembly expires upon the first meeting of the new assembly, and since we are unable to have a second assembly, the first assembly will remain until the situation allows us to have elections again,” he concluded.
Since the KMT never retook China, the “situation” never happened, and this assembly stayed in power for more than 40 years, and by the same logic, so did members of the Legislative Yuan and Control Yuan. This created a situation that would later be derisively referred to as the “10,000 year congress (萬年國會),” a term reportedly coined in 1978 by political activist Shih Ming-te (施明德).
As this assembly was comprised of almost only KMT members, Chiang was re-elected at every presidential election until his death in 1975. His vice president then finished off his term and power was transferred to his son, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). Coupled with the fact that new political parties were banned under martial law, Taiwan effectively became a dictatorship.
Dissenting voices appeared as early as 1959, when legislator Lee Wan-chu (李萬居) argued that since Taiwan supplies all the resources for the Republic of China, it should have more representation in the government and called for new elections.
But nothing changed for decades. Even after martial law was lifted in 1987, the same assembly was still in charge of the 1990 presidential elections — leading to the 1990 Wild Lily student movement, where one of the demands was that the assembly be dissolved.
Things started changing rapidly after that. In December 1991, the second national assembly was elected, 38 years overdue. In May of the following year, the assembly met and decided to transfer the power to elect the country’s president and vice-president to the people, leading to the first direct presidential elections of 1996.
Taiwan in Time, a column about Taiwan’s history that is published every Sunday, spotlights important or interesting events around the nation that have anniversaries this week.
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