20100109 Politicos retarding democratic progress

Politicos retarding democratic progress
　

By Andrew Cheng 鄭泰安
Saturday, Jan 09, 2010, Page 8

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are speeding up their selection of candidates for mayoral elections in the nation’s five special municipalities later this year.

The DPP has two strategies. In Taipei City, Taipei County and Taichung City, where its chances of winning are small, the party plans to appoint candidates. In Tainan and Kaohsiung cities, where its chances are good, the DPP will let party members register their candidacy before deciding the final candidate through opinion polls, perhaps in combination with primaries.

In Tainan and Kaohsiung, several people are already in the running, while the party’s Central Executive Committee is debating whether to include voting by party members.

The DPP’s problem with nominal party members has long been criticized by voters. The party’s headquarters and local branches must know who is paying the party fees for the large number of dummy members. DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was pressured by public opinion to deal with the issue after her appointment in 2008, but finally let it rest. If she thinks she can continue to ignore the problem thanks to favorable results in the Dec. 5 elections, she is probably misjudging many independent voters, of which there are many more in urban areas than in the countryside.

The DPP may define itself as a democratic party, but for many years it has allowed a few politicos who lack democratic understanding to keep their dummy members. They are basically gang leaders, and their dummy members have no opinions of their own. This is causing serious damage to Taiwan’s democratic development. It must be dealt with swiftly and the time to do that is now.

I can only hope that DPP members and members of the public with a good understanding of democracy will support Tsai in carrying out wide and bold reforms.

The biggest enemy is often that within. How to handle internal conflict while maintaining unity in public is key to the DPP’s ability to battle the KMT in both the special municipality mayoral elections and the 2012 presidential election. This internal conflict comes mainly from influential opportunists, radicals and factional leaders. Such politicos exist in all political parties and they are often the cause of party splits.

I am afraid it will be difficult for Tsai to resolve these internal conflicts by herself. The timely establishment of a pan-green alliance is the most urgent task at hand if the DPP wants to function as a constructive counterweight and become a catalyst for necessary democratic reform while at the same time preventing selfish politicos from hurting party unity.

Only a united party for democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law is capable of safeguarding Taiwanese sovereignty and leading the public toward a bright future. I hope the KMT will also initiate reform in this direction. However, if pan-blue supporters continue to tolerate Ma’s leadership style, which has centralized control of the Presidential Office, Executive Yuan and the KMT in his hands without any effective counterweight, democratic reform belongs to a distant future.

In any case, so long as the majority of the DPP’s membership is not independent, primaries involving voting party members are out of the question, both because it is undemocratic and because it goes against the will of many of the independent voters who will be key in the elections later this year.

Andrew Cheng is a researcher in the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Academia Sinica.