The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) legislative caucus is facing a leadership crisis amid ugly infighting. The clock is ticking; the fall legislative session kicks off on Friday.
At the center of the maelstrom stands a defiant Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), the DPP’s caucus whip, thwarting efforts by a majority of his caucus, party leadership and party Chairman and President William Lai (賴清德) to take him down.
The DPP’s popularity is in freefall, having plunged from the party most favored by the public to third place in just two months, according to the widely watched Formosa poll. From late May to late last month, party favorability dropped from 46.1 percent to 33 percent, while unfavorability spiked from 45 to 56.8 percent.
Photo: TT file photo
Even more disastrously, dissatisfaction in his administration has reached 60.5 percent, nearly double the 31 percent who are satisfied. Those numbers were roughly tied in late June at 46.8 to 44.7 percent.
In late June, the party was in good shape. Their popularity had been respectable for years, and polling showed at least some of the recall campaigns against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers were likely to succeed, which would have opened the possibility of the DPP winning some seats in subsequent by-elections.
Then, on June 28, Chairman Lai made the fateful decision to order the DPP to officially and fully back the recall campaigns. This was covered in depth in previous columns, but in summary within weeks, voters opposing the recalls surged to the polls — defeating all of them — and the president and his party’s popularity fell off a cliff.
Lai’s decision made the KMT’s claim that the recalls were a power grab by the DPP to overturn voter choices in last year’s election an objective reality. Asked why the public rejected the recalls, according to Formosa 49.3 percent said “to teach Lai and the DPP a lesson,” with only 17.4 percent choosing “the public supported the KMT lawmakers.”
In some cases, more people came out to vote against the recall than elected those KMT lawmakers in the first place.
MUTTON HOT POT
Typically, following a major defeat, political parties find sacrificial lambs and scapegoats to offer up to the public in a mutton hot pot of contrition.
President Lai tossed into the hot pot some cabinet members totally unrelated to the recalls as sacrificial lambs in a cabinet reshuffle.
Seven of the eight leaders of the DPP caucus resigned.
Yet, the most visible and fervent support of the recalls within the party was Ker, the party’s top leader in the legislature and the only one refusing to resign.
Formosa asked this remarkable question in their August poll following the recall defeats: “Some believe that the latest public opinion has already shown that this mass recall was a wrong decision harmful to the country and that it created social division. In your view, which of the following people should bear greater responsibility?”
Ker was named by 52 percent, followed by Lai at 45.8 percent.
Ker’s favorability rating is only 14.3 percent, with 68.5 percent viewing him unfavorably.
Reporting in local press suggests at least two-thirds of the DPP’s legislative caucus either has, or intends to, sign a petition calling for Ker to be ousted. The most recent reporting in Up Media cites party insiders saying that “approximately 30 percent” refuse to sign, and that no one dares to present the petition to Ker, suggesting he is still a powerful and commanding figure.
Nicknamed “Old Ker” (老柯), the 74-year-old is the longest-serving member of the legislature, first elected in 1992. He is a party elder and one of the founders of the DPP in 1986.
Over the years, Ker has built a reputation as a wheeler-dealer insider. During the Sunflower movement in 2014, when asked why the movement did not back the DPP, Ker was often cited as representative of the kind of DPP politician they did not trust.
MASS RECALL, NO DACHENG TEMPLE
The recall campaigns began organizing in December last year. In January, Ker became the most powerful and vocal supporter of the mass recall against KMT lawmakers within the DPP.
Though at the time, the KMT’s assertion that the campaigns were a DPP plot orchestrated to overturn the 2024 elections was incorrect, as the party was still keeping its distance, Ker’s beating of the drum gave the KMT considerable ammunition.
He was so personally invested that just after the failed recalls in July, it came out that on June 5, Ker had applied for a trademark on the slogan used on fake temple baseball caps, “Mass Recall Dacheng Temple,” (大罷免 大成宮) which is a clever homonym for “Mass Recall, Great Success.” This was a very bad look, especially after the recalls failed.
Under orders from Lai, the party has been putting pressure on the factions to back his ouster.
The press has been a bit confused on Ker’s factional affiliation, with many not mentioning it, but some putting him in the Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) faction. Recently, I met a high-ranking member of the Su faction and asked about this, and was informed that Ker was not part of the faction, but did confirm my guess that they had very good relations.
Confirming that, Su faction figures have been among the only ones defending Ker. Ker has his own clique, but it is not large enough to qualify as a faction.
Ker continues to stand firm, and reiterates that his term ends on Feb. 1 next year. So far, no one — including Chairman Lai himself — has been able to get him to budge.
Presumably to defuse one of the non-recall-related criticisms of him — that he is unyielding in his negotiations with the opposition parties — he has recently made a show of being friendly to them and willing to negotiate.
Meanwhile, the other seven top official posts in the DPP caucus remain empty with no candidates coming forward as of this writing. This leadership crisis is becoming urgent.
Part of the problem appears the most qualified for those positions were the ones who resigned. It is possible that until Ker’s position is clarified, no one wants to stick their neck out and wade into this mess.
Ker’s defenders have noted that he is by far the most knowledgeable in the party about legislative rules, regulations and customs. He would be hard to replace — and his confidence in refusing to budge suggests he knows his position is strong.
DISCIPLINE TO STRAIGHTJACKET
While Ker is the perfect scapegoat, and both the public and party want him to pay for the failure of the recalls, lost in this struggle is a basic question.
Why does the public distrust the DPP so much that previously apathetic voters turned out en masse to oppose the recalls after the DPP officially backed them?
There is no sign publicly of any serious soul-searching or debate within the party on this.
For all his faults, Ker is one of the few major DPP politicians left willing to buck his party’s authority and express dissenting opinions. The only other prominent one, lawmaker Wang Shih-cheng (王世堅), presciently opposed supporting the recalls from the beginning.
Following the chaos and division of the 2000s, the DPP under Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) professionalized the party and introduced message discipline. This was necessary to bring a wildly fractious party under control.
But has this gone too far? There is a bland uniformity to DPP politicians and their messaging today.
Some dissent is necessary to keep the party on its toes and evolving. Criticism from within the party is likely to be constructive and reflective of genuine concerns. Sacrificing Ker would be a short-term, popular fix.
It does not address the significant hole in their public support that has opened since the recalls.
Donovan’s Deep Dives is a regular column by Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) who writes in-depth analysis on everything about Taiwan’s political scene and geopolitics. Donovan is also the central Taiwan correspondent at ICRT FM100 Radio News, co-publisher of Compass Magazine, co-founder Taiwan Report (report.tw) and former chair of the Taichung American Chamber of Commerce. Follow him on X: @donovan_smith.
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