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DPP needs to return
to core values
By Hung Chi-kune 洪智坤
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was defeated in last month’s presidential
and legislative elections, but now it needs to move on from the loss and get
down to business. It needs to pull itself together and start behaving like an
opposition party. It owes it to the more than 6 million people who cast their
votes for DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Here are four of the things Taiwanese are worrying about these days:
First, on his first day in office, Premier Sean Chen irresponsibly declared that
the leanness-enhancing agent ractopamine is not toxic. Presumably this statement
was meant to pave the way for imports of US beef, but people are still concerned
about the issue.
Second, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government wants to speed up negotiations
for a US-Taiwan Trade and Investment Framework Agreement and people are asking
what effect such a pact would have on sectors such as animal husbandry,
machinery, steel and textiles.
Third, the Ministry of Finance will soon put forward tax reforms, but will it
really be possible to cut taxes for business owners and raise salaries for
employees as promised?
Fourth, the Council for Economic Planning and Development will soon start
setting up model free economic zones. It sounds like a big gift for southern
Taiwan, but will people really get to enjoy the benefits?
Issues relating to the interests of the majority of Taiwanese keep popping up,
but the DPP is nowhere to be seen. The country’s main opposition party has been
so passive and inactive recently that people may soon begin to wonder whether it
still exists.
Why has the DPP disappeared? The answer is that the party has become incapable
of guiding progressive values in Taiwan.
In this respect, the main things that count are political, economic and social
forces, the changing interactions between these three forces, and the role of
non-profit organizations and campaigns. Things that need to be discussed include
class relations, national identity, globalization, cross-strait relations and
how these factors are affecting the development of social forces in Taiwan.
From its inception until it took up the reins of government in 2000, the DPP has
had plenty of connections with workers, farmers, small business owners and
social movement groups. It stood for a variety of issues, such as ending martial
law, lifting the ban on opposition parties and newspapers, radical reform of the
legislature and National Assembly, direct election of all lawmakers, social
rights, including those of workers, farmers and women, and environmental rights.
All of these standpoints represented progressive values in Taiwan and they found
expression in the DPP’s “1999 Resolution on Taiwan’s Future.”
Although the DPP became more distanced from social and campaigning groups after
it got into power, it was able to continue to guide progressive values. This is
because it took up many of the issues that those groups stood for and
implemented them as government policies — things like the National Pension
(國民年金), the reform of work hours and the Labor Pension Act (勞工退休金條例).
Even the “Two Trillion and Twin Star Development Plan”, promoting
semiconductors, color-image displays, digital content and biotechnology, that
the DPP government launched in 2002 to meet the needs of industrial
restructuring, to a large extent promoted social as well as economic interests.
Of course, the corruption case against two-term DPP president Chen Shui-bian
(陳水扁) badly tarnished the party’s clean and progressive image and caused it to
be voted out of office in 2008.
Although the DPP made calls for fairness and justice a cornerstone of its
campaign for last month’s elections, it did not manage to closely link up with
social movements. Tsai’s proposal that professional politicians should represent
the progressive demands of social groups amounted to a declaration by the DPP
that it was cutting off its links with disadvantaged groups like workers and
farmers, and with civic groups.
With respect to cross-strait relations and business development, the DPP has
fallen out of touch with local business groups like the Hollywant Associations
and Industrial Park Associations. As a result, the party lacked support from
social groups for the policy positions it put forward. The result was that the
DPP lost a lot of its ability to represent progressive values.
The challenges of globalization and economic liberalization, loss of farmland
and industrial restructuring are all sure to have an impact on the entire
structure of society. Ma and his newly appointed “financial Cabinet” are
gradually defining and deciding what policies to follow in response to these
trends, while at the same time having their room to maneuver limited by China
and the US.
The DPP will have to grapple with analyzing the new face of Taiwanese society if
it is to come up with corresponding policy proposals of its own and formulate
new targets to guide progressive values from this point onward.
Hung Chi-kune is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party’s Central
Executive Committee.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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