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EDITORIAL: The DPP’s
unprecedented challenge
Just when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) seems to be doing nothing right — which
is why he and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) are mired in misery — the
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) appears to be experiencing the same problem,
something the 26-year-old party has never faced before.
The task at hand for the DPP is unprecedented: How to assure Taiwanese during
this two-year period without a major national election that it is trustworthy
and reformed, and deserves an opportunity to govern again.
The DPP has always thrived during election campaigns, when it could attack the
KMT with abandon on many fronts, such as the KMT’s authoritarian history,
illegal party assets, vote-buying and its oppression of Taiwanese. The DPP is
not only known for its pinpoint agenda-setting, but also for its creative
strategies during elections. Even the KMT would likely admit that the DPP has
always been better at utilizing its fewer resources for greater gains during
elections.
That stage is not available to the DPP until the “seven-in-one” elections to be
held late next year, although there could still be some by-elections for it to
practice on.
Halfway through this “moratorium period,” the party, under the leadership of DPP
Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), is struggling to win back the public’s confidence
with the same momentum the KMT enjoyed during the DPP’s low ebb between 2006 and
2008. The DPP has recently made a pair of bold — yet questionable — moves that
could come back to haunt it, given the mixed reactions to them within the party.
First, Su announced the launch of a recall movement against KMT lawmakers and Ma
over their perceived failure to listen to the public and their poor
performances. Second, he hinted that an anti-nuclear referendum in New Taipei
City (新北市) should be combined with local elections next year so that it could
receive stronger support and be passed.
Both proposals seem legitimate, since Ma has mishandled all of his reform plans,
and KMT lawmakers have equivocated between what Ma wants and what the public
wants, and an anti-nuclear referendum would need to exceed a high approval
threshold in order to stop the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District
(貢寮), New Taipei City, becoming operational. So, why did these two proposals
receive mixed reviews?
It appears that Taiwanese are so pragmatic that they do not want to waste time
now on something which cannot possibly be achieved, such as recalling Ma. As for
recalling KMT lawmakers, some DPP members fear that the move could trigger a KMT
counterattack of recalling DPP lawmakers, which could eventually lead to an
all-out political war between the two parties.
Additionally, while holding referendums in tandem with major elections has been
common in other democracies, the practice has been stigmatized in Taiwan by
portraying it as a tool to incite “duels” between parties, which the public may
not favor.
This characterizes the DPP’s dilemma during this two-year period. The party can
neither afford to sit and wait for Ma to fail, nor do anything that might make
people think — or help the KMT to spread the idea — that it opposes things
merely for the sake of opposition. The DPP’s predicament has been highlighted by
its own recent survey that showed that the party’s support was higher than the
KMT’s for the first time since 2005, and for the third time in its history,
while both parties failed to surpass 26 percent approval ratings.
Facing this unprecedented challenge, the DPP perhaps needs to forget about its
nemesis for two years, take a look at itself in the mirror and think about what
has brought the party this far since Sept. 28, 1986. It needs to learn to fight
a war without its enemy weighing on its mind the whole time.
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