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EDITORIAL : KMT
knives are out for old ally Lee
There are under six months to go until January’s legislative and presidential
elections and the knives are out — against erstwhile allies.
Twelve years after James Soong (宋楚瑜) scuppered what had been expected to be the
Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) cakewalk through the 2000 presidential
election, KMT officials and their allies in the media appear as antsy as hissing
cats at the idea that he might steal away pan-blue camp voters once again.
Conspiracy theorists tired of watching their X-Files and 24 box sets are having
a field day with rumors and allegations about Soong mulling another run for the
presidency, or seeking a legislative seat or hashing out some form of alliance
with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). It would be funny, if it weren’t
giving blue supporters yet another chance for some historical revisionism.
Soong has refused to say whether he would run next year for either a district or
at-large legislative seat, but some of his People First Party (PFP) officials
have confirmed that the idea is being considered. Although the PFP and the KMT
mended fences long enough to form an alliance in 2007, albeit under the KMT
banner, it was always an uneasy grouping, with plenty of hurt feelings on both
sides and complaints from Soong that he and his support base have been ignored
ever since.
To hear some KMTers speak, it all boils down to the machinations of their
archnemesis, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who they still blame for the
2000 presidential election loss to Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), not the inadequacies of
then-vice president and candidate Lien Chan (連戰) or Soong’s decision to run as
an independent, which split the blue-camp vote.
KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) said Lee was pushing for Soong to run for an
at-large seat for the PFP. The Chinese-language China Times also tossed out the
idea that the DPP was toying with linking up with Soong and perhaps asking him
to be premier if the party returned to power next year. According to the
newspaper, Lee was behind the suggestion. The DPP denied the speculation.
Meanwhile, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) blamed Lee for the introduction of “black
gold” politics, while doubting that Lee’s call for people to vote for the DPP’s
presidential candidate would have much of an influence because he “doesn’t keep
abreast of developments in society because of his age.” Wu said it was during
Lee’s presidency that Taiwan’s political culture became riddled with corruption
and gangsters.
Wu was right only in one detail. It was under Lee that the term “black gold” was
coined and the extent of political corruption began to be revealed because Lee
was the first president and/or KMT chairman to seriously try to tackle the
problem. However, the spiderweb of local factions, political patronage, business
links and gangsters had been refined under successive KMT administrations ever
since the party fled from China.
It was the public’s disgust with black-gold politics that fueled Chen and the
DPP’s rise to power in 2000. The KMT’s attempt to nobble Soong in that election
with the Chung Hsing Bills scandal did hurt him, but it hurt the KMT more.
And despite what many in the KMT believe, Lee did not campaign for Chen in 2000
or pick Lien over Soong as the party’s standard-bearer as a way to destroy the
KMT; Lee went with Lien because he was seen as “Taiwanese” while Soong was a
Mainlander and therefore a better exemplar of Lee’s “Taiwan First” policy for
both the KMT and the nation.
Such Orwellian newspeak is nothing new for a party that for decades tried to
indoctrinate the public against thinking there could be alternatives to its
rule, or that continues to insist that there was a “1992 consensus” in
cross-strait talks and that the DPP is more corrupt than it ever was.
What crimethink, to quote old George.
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