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EDITORIAL: Abandoned
at the end of the race
Often in politics, you reap what you sow. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
legislative caucus, which has by far the most influence in the Legislative Yuan,
railroaded through legislation last summer that combined the presidential and
legislative elections, bringing the presidential election forward by
two-and-a-half months.
The KMT caucus used the flimsy excuse that combining the elections would save
taxpayers money to justify the decision, but it was obvious that the legislation
was engineered to help President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election bid. The date
chosen for the elections, Jan. 14, is more than four months ahead of the date
when Ma would have to step down should he lose, giving him plenty of time for
shenanigans that could prolong his power or diminish that of an incoming
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
It also looks like the election date was chosen to coincide with school finals
so young voters, who are more likely to vote for the DPP, would skip the poll.
So the KMT caucus delivered the combined election to Ma on a platter, but now
that the legislative elections are less than a week away, are KMT legislators
happy that they did so? What did they get out of it?
Ma agreed to lend support to legislators in the elections for their cooperation
in passing legislation that would help him. However, now that they have done so,
Ma is showing a complete lack of gratitude. Does he even remember his
legislators?
KMT headquarters has engaged in a sort of “Ma first” strategy, with local
legislators forced to fend for themselves in fundraising, promotion, rally
organizing and getting out the vote. Ma’s camp has taken the lion’s share of
central party funds, leaving table scraps for the KMT’s legislative candidates.
He barely even has time to stump for his party brethren, often showing up once
to a local campaign rally to show his face and then basically cross that
legislator’s name off a list.
This does not seem like a smart strategy considering that Ma owes virtually all
of his power over the past four years to the fact that the KMT-dominated
legislature has pretty much rubber-stamped everything he wanted. Not showing his
appreciation is a true lack of respect. This has led to a lot of grumbling in
the ranks, with many KMT hopefuls opting to not invite Ma to their campaign
events and refraining from putting up billboards featuring the president.
When you compare relations between the presidential candidates and legislative
hopefuls of the other major parties, there are stark differences. DPP
presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been throwing her weight behind
DPP legislative candidates throughout her campaign, mainly because the DPP
chairperson is fully aware of the importance of breaking the KMT’s stranglehold
on the legislature.
People First Party candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜), on the other hand, seems to be
running solely to boost the chances of the PFP’s legislative candidates. His
stated goal is to surpass the party vote threshold of 5 percent so the PFP can
have some legislators-at-large.
When KMT legislative candidates see the support their competitors are getting
from their party headquarters, they must be kicking themselves. Whether or not
Ma wins this election, you can bet the KMT caucus is not going to forget his
lack of support.
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