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DPP selection process still flawed
By Chen Mao-hsiung ³¯Z¶¯
Tuesday, Jun 01, 2010, Page 8
During the debate between Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (½²^¤å) and her challenger for the post of DPP chief, You
Ching (¤×²M), on May 15, it was pointed out that the party, which had more than
500,000 members when it was in power, now has only 100,000-plus members. It has
been suggested that the reason why three-quarters of the party¡¦s membership had
evaporated had to do with the way it selects its candidates for election to
public posts, and since party members cannot choose the candidates, they see no
reason why they should continue to pay their membership dues.
There are parties that have rigid or more loose forms of organization. The rigid
type is tightly organized with strict regulations and its members have clearly
defined rights and duties. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the DPP and most
of Taiwan¡¦s other political parties are of the rigid type. In contrast, loosely
organized parties don¡¦t have fixed membership or a tight system to regulate
their members. Mainstream parties in the US are organized in this way, as is
Taiwan¡¦s New Party.
For rigid parties, a big party is one that has many members, so from that point
of view the DPP¡¦s loss of members is a setback. When it comes to irregularities,
however, the falling membership is a step forward because most of the members
who have left the party were only recruited to vote for certain people. The DPP
used to have too many of these ¡§headcount¡¨ members, but since the party decided
to use public opinion polls to select its candidates for public office, most DPP
politicians are no longer interested in fostering such members. Losing them is a
good thing for the party.
In the past, DPP members could not only vote for party officers, but also
nominate candidates for government posts. Those who wished to get elected would
recruit headcount members to vote for them, and those members held sway over who
would become key party officials or candidates for public office.
Since the decision to use public opinion polls to choose candidates in
government elections, the number of headcount members fell sharply, leaving only
members who are genuinely devoted to the DPP to choose its officers. Meanwhile,
the fact that the DPP¡¦s candidates for public office are no longer chosen by its
members means that it has lost one of the features of a rigid party. The KMT, is
also grappling with this same issue.
The DPP has changed the way it chooses its candidates for public office several
times. The main purpose of these changes has been to eliminate abuse, but this
has failed. When the DPP was first set up, appraisal by party officers carried
half the weight in choosing candidates and members¡¦ votes the other half. The
problem then was that, with too few people voting, vote buying could easily
occur, so the system of appraisal by party officers was scrapped.
However, when candidates were chosen entirely by members, the party was flooded
by headcount members. In order to eliminate this problem, the DPP added public
opinion polls, thereby reducing the influence of headcount members. At first,
opinion polls carried half the weight, then it was upped to 70 percent, but
there were still plenty of headcount members.
In order to get rid of headcount members, the DPP scrapped members¡¦ votes as
part of the selection process, meaning that candidates were chosen by opinion
polls alone. This change put pressure on the KMT, forcing it to make similar
changes.
The KMT never really had this headcount member problem. Back in the days of
one-party dictatorship, the KMT had a monopoly on political resources, so
everyone wanted to join it. The KMT had millions of members, so if politicians
recruited a few headcount members, it still wouldn¡¦t be enough to swing the vote
in their direction. It was quite different with the DPP, which at first had a
small membership, so getting some headcount members to vote for someone could
change the outcome.
The change to selecting candidates through public opinion polls also signifies a
shift from the rigid type of party toward the looser type. Through polls, the
party¡¦s candidates for office were chosen by ordinary members of the public, not
party members, which is the way loosely organized parties operate. The reason
behind the DPP making this move toward the looser type of party organization was
to eliminate abuse, but new kinds of abuse keep popping up. When candidates were
being selected for the last legislative election, some people arranged for their
supporters to get extra telephones so they would have a higher chance of being
called in the opinion polls.
The replacing of party members¡¦ votes with public opinion polls also caused
another headache as supporters of rival parties could decide the candidates for
one¡¦s own party, making the selection process unfair.
The DPP tried to deal with this by taking measures to exclude pan-blue voters
from the polls, but they could only exclude those who had been pan-blue
supporters in the past, not those who were going to support the pan-blues in the
future. Furthermore, people who used to support the pan-blues might vote for the
pan-greens in the next election.
In adopting features of loosely organized parties, the KMT and DPP have got the
formula wrong because their candidates are not chosen by their supporters, which
is the way real loose parties do it.
In the US, for example, when selecting presidential candidates, primaries for
the Republican and Democratic parties are held in tandem. Voters can only take
part in one selection vote, so only genuine party supporters decide which
candidates their party will field.
Chen Mao-hsiung is a retired professor of National Sun Yat-sen
University.
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