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DPP needs deep
community roots
By Liu Dsih-chi 劉子琦
Compared with his overwhelming victory by 2.2 million votes four years ago,
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was this year re-elected by a much narrower margin
of 790,000 votes. Moreover, voter turnout for the presidential poll as well as
the gains and losses made by parties for legislative seats in different areas
were in keeping with the established voting pattern in which the north supports
pan-blue parties while the south supports their pan-green rivals.
The locations where parties succeeded in maintaining or increasing their share
of the vote are those where they control the local government, and this
consolidation raises the threat of political division and conflict between
different regions. Although Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai
Ing-wen (蔡英文) lost the presidential election, she succeeded in raising her
party’s political culture to a new level of rational debate and peaceful
competition.
On learning of his win at the Jan. 14 presidential poll, Ma said that it was a
victory for Taiwanese and for a program that seeks clean government, peace and
prosperity.
However, there is more to the outcome of the presidential election than the
obvious regional distribution of votes; it also reflected the diverse demands of
different social strata.
During the course of the candidates’ campaigns, business corporations filled
newspaper columns with big advertisements calling on readers to vote for their
favorite candidates. Less visible was the reality of a growing gap between rich
and poor. Wealth distribution is just as important as economic prosperity in
affecting people’s perceptions and the country’s happiness index.
Policies that favor big businesses can only lead to Taiwan’s economic structure
leaning even more toward social class polarization.
One of the focuses of the Ma campaign was to attack the corruption of former DPP
president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). However, that merely served to highlight Ma’s
inability to carry out his own policies during his first term in office. As
president, Ma has so far wasted the high expectations that voters once had of
him.
He also wasted his Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) large majority in the
legislature, which would have been invaluable in pushing through reforms.
Instead, he ended up exploiting Chen’s questionable legacy to win at the polls.
Ma failed to convince voters that he would speed up the pace of reform over the
next four years, or that his executive team would desist from using the state as
a cash machine and overcome institutional waste and inertia.
Fighting to be re-elected with few political achievements to talk about, Ma had
to rely on blasting Tsai with a hard-hitting, intense and pervasive advertising
campaign, along with carefully coordinated moves made by judicial and executive
departments. This is just the kind of thing that Ma and his campaign manager,
King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), are good at, but it is nothing new to the DPP, which was
originally formed out of the opposition to authoritarian rule.
There has been no shortage of raw material with which to bash the KMT, be it
Ma’s failure to live up to his 2008 campaign pledges, his party’s considerable
assets and notorious corruption, the so-called “1992 consensus” or the way that
Taiwan’s [ROC] national flag gets hidden away whenever Chinese officials come to
visit.
These are all examples that reveal the real Ma behind his political rhetoric,
and they could have provided ample fodder for the DPP to go on the offensive.
Instead, however, it found itself on the receiving end of attacks throughout the
campaign.
The KMT repeatedly pressed the DPP on the subject of cross-strait issues, which
it perceives as the party’s weak point. In response, Tsai fostered the idea that
cross-strait issues are not just a matter of sovereignty, but also of how to
deal with China’s ascent, the effects of which include closer interaction and
fiercer competition between China and Taiwan across the Taiwan Strait and in the
global arena.
Tsai determined that the DPP needed to establish more comprehensive and detailed
policy positions, and not wait for differences in behavior and values between
Taiwanese and Chinese to produce comparisons and clashes as they interact.
With the KMT exerting not just the full strength of the party, but also its
influence in government and the armed forces to launch an all-out assault, Tsai
chose to respond with a simple narrative that appealed to both reason and
emotion.
Her response can be seen as a declaration of the style to be followed by a new
generation of DPP leaders. Since her election as party chairperson in 2008, the
DPP, which had hitherto been a highly ideological party prone to emotional
clashes, Tsai has injected sought to embrace community politics, which is more
closely connected with people’s daily lives.
Now that Tsai has announced her resignation as DPP chairperson, the party faces
the task of choosing a new leader. However, it has few choices as to the way in
which its political line will develop.
The single-member constituency system has become a source of power in the
legislature, blurring the roles of legislators and local councilors to the
extent that there is now considerable overlap between the two.
The subtle relationship between economic and political power emerges in the
course of handling community affairs, fostering community consciousness and
developing community enterprises. These developments are not just a starting
point for the DPP to make a comeback in northern cities, but also for it to
deepen and consolidate a new direction for agricultural production, the
environment and life in general in central and southern areas.
Taiwan today is trailing in last place among the four Asian “tiger” economies.
Carefully selected economic statistics can no longer conceal society’s widening
contrasts and sharpening contradictions. Although the DPP remains in opposition,
it still has to face and deal with tough questions about how economic, trade and
political interactions across the Taiwan Strait are influencing the country’s
social development and the fairness of wealth distribution.
Only by deepening its community roots and extending its influence from the
bottom up can the DPP overcome the dominance of the KMT and its pan-blue allies
in northern Taiwan.
Liu Dsih-chi is an associate professor in Asia University’s Department of
International Business.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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