The Ties That
Won't Bind
Taiwan's pro-independence
party scored a win in legislative elections－will the Strait
turn cross again?
TIME,
DECEMBER 10, 2001
BY MARK R. MITCHELL Taipei
It was all spit and tears. The most salient moment
in the campaign for Taiwan's legislative elections last Saturday－a
contest the local press ultimately dubbed the "saliva war"－came
when the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) issued an official press
release in which it remarked, without elaborating, that "23
million Taiwanese are wiping the DPP's ass." Candidates
from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party were not the only
ones splashed with vitriol. At one time or another, negative
campaigning and personal attacks sent members of each of Taiwan's
four major parties to their knees, weeping. Or at least they
put on a good show of crying as the TV cameras recorded their
entreaties to the electorate to vote for them out of sympathy.
If the candidates had cooked up ideas for pulling the island
out of its worst ever recession, they didn't share them.
The schmaltzy theater and lack of serious debate on the issues
led many Taiwanese to write off the campaign as nothing more
than a bad joke. But by the time results were tallied on Saturday
night, it was clear that, either by serendipity or intent, Taiwan's
voters had orchestrated a revolution, one that is arguably even
more sweeping than Chen Shui-bian's victory in the March 2000
presidential elections. As a result, Taiwan's relations with
mainland China, which regards the island as a renegade province,
could become a lot more testy.
When Chen rose to the presidency, ending 50 years of KMT rule,
the commissars in Beijing worried that he and the DPP would
try to assert formal independence for Taiwan. Those concerns
proved unfounded, largely because Chen was constrained by the
KMT, which not only retained a majority in the legislature,
but also became a pulpit for decidedly pro-China politicians
under its mainland-born chairman, Lien Chan. On Saturday, however,
voters tore off Chen's shackles as the KMT won only 68 of the
legislature's 225 seats, down from 123 coming into the vote.
Chen's DPP, meanwhile, will occupy 87 seats, up from 70.
That does not give the President an absolute majority, but
it does allow him to strike a deal to lure a few maverick KMT
or independent politicians rather than engage in tedious and
fragile coalition building, leaving the KMT totally out of the
government. For the first time since Chiang Kai-shek's army
fled to Taiwan, it seems likely politicians advocating unification
with the mainland have been sidelined.
The indefatigable Lee Teng-hui, who
was President for 12 years and chairman of the KMT until he
was ousted by pro-China politicians earlier this year, was partly
responsible for crippling his former party. Lee was not a candidate
in Saturday's election and holds no governmental position. But
you wouldn't have guessed it judging by his airtime during the
campaign and the fact that Taiwan has been papered over with
posters bearing his grandfatherly face. The 78-year-old Lee
has fashioned himself as the chief backer of the Taiwan Solidarity
Union (TSU), a three-month-old party made up of politicians
whose chief qualification seems to be that they are friends
with Lee Teng-hui.
The TSU might not become a force to be reckoned with, but Lee
almost certainly will. Last week, he announced that he will
form something called a "do tank," which he said will
be sort of like a think tank, except that it will actually do
something: namely, pressure the government and Taiwan's opposition
politicians to think like him. And his campaign speeches made
it clear that this means taking a much harder line on China
and its sympathizers in the KMT. In one speech, Lee described
himself as a prophet who would help release the Taiwanese people
from the bondage of an overly powerful KMT and an intrusive
China, boasting that "Lee Teng-hui is the only one in the
world who's not afraid of the Chinese communists."
Within hours of his announcement, Chen said his government
was ready to work with the TSU and Lee's do tank. And there
are signs that the former President's rallying cry has made
an impression with large numbers of KMT members who oppose the
party's current stance on cross-strait relations. KMT candidate
Chen Hsueh-fen, for example, spent much of the campaign arguing
that her party should cooperate more closely with the DPP, a
move she said would involve adopting a Lee-esque position on
China. If the mainlander element of the KMT proves stubborn,
Chen hinted that between 20 and 30 members of the party are
ready to act unilaterally, perhaps even defecting to the DPP.
While that might be an exaggeration, many analysts believe that
a significant chunk of the KMT harbors similar sentiments and
that this could, at a minimum, portend a change of leadership
and a major rethink of the party's policy toward Beijing. This
would make the KMT even more like Chen Shui-bian's DPP, and
leave the mainland, suddenly, without a Taiwan counterpart advocating
reunification.
With reporting by Joyce Huang and Donald Shapiro/Taipei
