Civic groups yesterday urged legislators to create councilor-at-large seats in local governments to attract more young people to local leadership positions and to root out party cronyism.
The long-standing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) system of partisan clientelism, of which the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is also guilty, must be given up to allow room for local talent and smaller parties, Economic Democracy Union president Lin Hsiu-hsin (林秀幸) told a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
The nation cannot keep allowing party factions to run local governments, she said, calling on legislators to amend the Local Government Act (地方制度法) to allow for councilor-at-large seats, without changing the overall number of seats.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The nation’s local governments are its testing ground for democracy, but also its Achilles heel, Lin said.
Due to the threat posed by China, Taiwan is in a more perilous position than other third-wave democracies, she said.
To uproot historical threads of authoritarianism and prevent local governments from falling under China’s influence, the nation must go through a second democratic reformation and strengthen its sense of identity, she added.
After President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was elected in 2016, Beijing refused to communicate with the central government, instead dealing directly with local groups and individuals, she said.
After the 2018 elections, in which the KMT won 15 city and county seats, Beijing shifted its focus to local government leaders, hoping to bypass the central leadership, she added.
Local governments are the last mile on the nation’s road to democracy, but they are also China’s shortest path to disruption, Lin said, calling for electoral reform in the hopes of opening up local leadership.
Reform is urgent, as Beijing is skilled at manipulating social divisions to weaken the state, Lin added.
She cited as examples the debates regarding marriage equality and food imports from Japan, saying that Beijing manipulated borough wardens, influential political figures and religious groups into mobilizing in opposition.
Comparing party councilor votes in the 2014 local elections, Taiwan Citizen Front deputy secretary-general Chen Ku-hsiung (陳估熊) said that the DPP received 4.51 million votes to the KMT’s 4.48 million, but only won 291 seats compared with 386 for the KMT.
The discrepancy was even higher in the 2016 general election, when the DPP won 44 percent of all party votes, but only 32 percent of local seats, while the KMT took 42 percent of local seats, despite only winning 27 percent of party votes, Chen said.
Many young people ran for local seats in the 2018 elections, but even fewer were elected than a decade earlier, Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy secretary-general Chang Yu-meng (張育萌) said.
In 1998, representatives aged 30 to 39 comprised 21.7 percent of local councils, but today the proportion has shrunk to only 13 percent, Chang said.
This is not unusual, as young people elected 10 years ago have leaned on local and family resources for re-election, he added.
About 34.5 percent of councilors are aged 50 to 59, while 23.9 percent are older than 60, he said, adding that these demographics do not reflect their constituents or the nation at large.
Local politics has become a game between factions buying off the right people, Chang said, adding that this lack of oversight presents a golden opportunity for Beijing.
The groups hope for the addition of at-large seats and revisions to election deposit rules so that more young people could have a fighting chance in the next local elections, he said.
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