Lessons of Taiwan's elections

By LI ZHINING

BEIJING, China

Published: January 17, 2008

Scenes from Taiwan's elections are always exciting. Despite the struggles between parties, these democratic elections never strike terror in the hearts of the people like the struggles that took place in China during the Cultural Revolution. At that time violence often broke out when factions struggled against each other.

However, most elections in the world proceed in peace. In immature democracies there is sometimes cheating, such as in Eastern Europe during the so-called "color revolutions." Another example is Iraq. On election day, the people were afraid of bombs that could go off at any moment, yet they rushed in large numbers to the voting booths to express their hopes for peace.

Why are elections usually peaceful while the Cultural Revolution was so violent? It is because the struggle between factions during the Cultural Revolution lacked proper procedures aimed at a certain result. With no clear aim, one faction defeated the other through violence.

Neither faction had a clear purpose, nor would either one admit that the other had won. All they could do was continue to fight until the central authority "expressed its attitude" in the conflict. As soon as the official "attitude" was made clear, the losing faction would be overwhelmed.

This is because there was no culture of elections, only a culture of violence. Therefore there could be no result other than a decision or opinion from a major leader or the central authority. The majority of the people could not decide anything; only the autocratic leaders held the right to make decisions.

If there had been a culture of elections, where every citizen had a vote, there would not have been a Cultural Revolution. Of course, small conflicts occasionally break out during Taiwan's elections, but they do not affect the whole situation.

As Taiwan's democracy matures, it provides lessons for the future democratization of mainland China. The behavior of Democratic Progressive Party politicians led to their resounding defeat in Saturday's legislative elections.

Immediately after the election, in which the Kuomintang won a strong majority in the legislature, analysts began commenting that if the party also wins the presidential election on March 22 it may represent a loss for democratic politics. The fact that people are concerned about a return to authoritarianism demonstrates the growing maturity of democracy in Taiwan. But Ma Ying-jeou, the KMT's presidential candidate, behaved responsibly as a politician and was not overwhelmed by the party's election victory.

Furthermore, commentators reminded everyone that the KMT's victory was not the result of the party's good work, but rather the result of voter dissatisfaction with the ruling party. Thus, if the KMT takes back the ruling power, it definitely must not resort to "dirty money politics" again. Otherwise it will not be able to retain that position.

The Taiwanese also recognized that there was no significant shift in the fundamental voter bases of the blue and green camps in terms of the legislative elections, despite the blue camp's win. The blue KMT won 5.01 million votes, while the green DPP won 3.61 million. The remaining minor parties shared the rest of the 1.16 million ballots. In total, the pan-green camp won about 4 million votes, not a small figure.

In the presidential election of 2000, the DPP won with just over 30 percent of the vote because the People First Party split from the KMT, dividing the blue camp. Among the three candidates, Lien Chan, representing the KMT, got just over 20 percent of the vote. This was similar to the situation in South Korea in 1987, when the result of struggles between Kim Young-Sam and Kim Dae-Jung benefited Roh Tae-Woo, who won with 36.6 percent of the vote.

If Taiwan's election law had required a candidate to win over 50 percent of the vote or face a second round between the two top contenders, Chen Shui-bian would not have won the presidency.

This time, it appears that the KMT could win in the March presidential election, having obtained somewhere between 51 and 58 percent of the votes in the legislative elections. However, in 2000 the combined ballots cast for the blue camp -- for Lien Chan from the KMT and James Soong from the PFP -- surpassed 60 percent. Still, the winner was the DPP team of Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu. In Saturday's election the pan-green camp won 40 percent of the vote, despite the administration's troubles over the past eight years. What does this mean?

If the KMT does not stay alert and ignores the nearly 40 percent support for the green camp, the story of Chen Shui-bian could be repeated. This is the way party politics should be.

Some senior KMT supporters think that Chen's party lost in the latest elections due to his tactics in eliminating the halo surrounding former President Chiang Kai-shek and his son. But I hold the opposite opinion.

If Chen had not done so, his losses would have been greater. His major problem was his poor administration, not the Chiang issue. Otherwise, with his record of poor achievement, corruption, scandals, weak economic development and poor international interaction, the DPP should have collapsed. But the pan-green still controls 40 percent of the vote because the campaign to remove the Chiangs' halo touched their hearts.

Therefore, if the KMT insists on holding on to the corpse of Chiang Kai-shek, it will one day lose even the pan-blue supporters. The KMT should have paid attention to opinion polls on the deep-blue camp's support for the Chiangs -- only about 5 percent of the people supported this. Undecided voters supported the KMT this time in hopes of improving the falling economy, not to bring back the memorial tablets of the great leaders and place them in the hearts of the people again.

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(Li Zhining is an independent thinker and writer. He was formerly a researcher at the Economic Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Li Zhining.)

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