The December 1998 elections retired many old political figures and created a few new stars, but there was no major realigning of the basic structure of Taiwan's party politics.
In the past decade or so since the lifting of martial law in 1987, the island has been catching up rapidly in developing into a full-fledged democracy. Elections for important government posts have been held regularly, and voter turnout in these elections has been reasonably high. In the "three-in-one" election this past December, voter turnout was over 80 percent for the mayoral and council elections in Taipei and Kaohsiung, and over 68 percent for the nationwide legislative election. By casting their votes, "the people have spoken" of who they thought best to represent them in the Legislative Yuan and city councils, and to lead Taiwan into the next century.
In December, the only national-level election was for members of the Legislative Yuan, and its results will be influential in terms of the country's development in the next several years. "The ROC Constitution states clearly that the Executive Yuan, the highest executive power of the country, answers to the Legislative Yuan," explains John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, director of the University of South Carolina's Center for Asian Studies and a former professor of political science at National Chengchi University. "Although the premier, the head of the Executive Yuan, is appointed by the president and hence no longer needs the approval of the Legislature, the president still needs to take into account the composition of the Legislature when he appoints the premier. The Legislature remains the dominant power in directing the nation's major policies."
As a consequence of the downsizing of the provincial government and the freezing of provincial-level elections, legisla tive seats were increased from the original 164 to 225. The competition among candidates for the Legislature, nevertheless, was no less tough even with the increased number of seats. Fifty-seven provincial assembly members who still wanted to have a role on the political stage jumped in. Since these provincial-level politicians had close ties with local factions, winning legislative seats was not very difficult. Forty-six, about 80 percent of them, were elected, and 36 were Kuomintang (KMT) members. Their success contributed substantially to the KMT's rousing victory in this Legislative Yuan election. Including the 23 nationwide constituency seats and 4 overseas Chinese seats by proportional allotment, the KMT secured 123 legisla tive seats, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won 70, and the New Party (NP) dropped from 21 seats to 11, despite the increase in the total number of legislative seats.
This result was not too much of a surprise to observers. According to Hsieh's analysis, voters in Taiwan's national-level elections can be divided into two major camps: "traditional KMT" supporters, and "traditional DPP" supporters. And the electoral fortunes between these two camps have been very much stabilized in the past decade or so. The "traditional" dimension includes parties or political alliances fragmented from the two major ones, such as the NP and the Democratic Alliance from the KMT, and the Taiwan Independence Party (TAIP) and the New Nation Alliance from the DPP.
The forming of these two major camps, as Hsieh explains, is based essentially on people's different perspectives on the issue of Taiwan independence versus reunification with China. "In the West, the forming of political parties is based prima rily on such issues as class, religion, environmentalism, and so on, but in Taiwan, people can't tell the differences on these issues among the major political parties," he says. "The only issue people can easily identify and which parties have ex plained clearly is that of Taiwan independence versus reunification with China." Under the circumstances, people's identifi cation with this topic will very likely determine their party preference which, in turn, will, to a large extent, account for their vote choice. Those who do not agree with Taiwan independence support the pro-Chinese-reunification NP, the pro-status-quo KMT, or alliances and candidates that have split off from these groups. Those who believe in Taiwan independence, on the other hand, support the DPP or the TAIP. "There are certainly many other reasons voters make decisions," Hsieh adds. "But their stance on China's reunification and Taiwan independence is the factor that dominates people's voting behavior--whether the subject is brought up in the election or not."
Hsieh does not anticipate any major changes in this stable voting structure, or in the two-camp political map in the near future. In each of the four legislative elections that have been held since 1989, the "traditional KMT" camp has gotten about 60 percent of the votes, and the "traditional DPP" camp has gotten about 30 percent. In fact, the DPP has never won more than a third of the votes in any national-level election, although it has not been uncommon for DPP candidates to win more than 40 percent of the votes in local-level elections. In this past December's fourth Legislative Yuan election, the percentage of votes the "traditional KMT" won was about the same as before. Because of further fragmentation in each camp, the KMT was able to win nearly 55 percent of the seats, an increase of 3 percent, although it had only 46 percent of the votes, the same as it had three years ago.
What seems perhaps even more stable than this voting s tructure is Taiwan's "election culture": mud-slinging, election bribery--everything but presenting political views. Scholars agree that election bribery is common outside of the cities of Taipei and Kaohsiung. "No one actually pays cash [for votes] nowadays," says Hu Fu, a professor of political science at National Taiwan University and a member of Academia Sinica. "Instead, candidates promise voters some benefit if a certain number of votes come in from that area. It's still vote-buying--only a little more sophisticated than before." John Hsieh agrees. He explains it by saying that the enforcement of Taiwan's campaign regulations is based on low standards that seem merely to wink at such behavior. The free dinners sponsored by many candidates, for example, would be considered a form of election bribery in many democracies, but they are taken for granted in Taiwan.
Another negative influence on Taiwan's election culture, as Hsieh sees it, is the single, nontransferable vote system. Under this system, parties often nominate a number of candidates in an electorate district, which forces candidates from the same party to compete against one another. This "internal" competition rules out the competitive advantages and resources of the party and instead forces individual candidates to rely on their own resources. In order to get more votes, candidates have to distinguish themselves by slinging mud at others, and bitter rivalries are developed within the parties. And when candi dates have to rely on other resources, they seek the assistance of factions or business groups. One solution to this--although it has its share of critics--is to change the electoral system to proportional representation. "If we emphasized political parties instead of individual candidates, we would have fewer bad electoral habits," Hsieh says. But although the issue has been discussed often, the government has thus far made no move to address it.
However, election bribery and mud-slinging--even the results of the legislative elections--did not seem to draw much attention in December. Most people, particularly the media and intellectuals, showed much greater interest in the mayoral races. In northern Taiwan, the atmosphere was tense from the beginning. People's attention was drawn by various polls that showed a 50-50 situation between the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou and the DPP's incumbent Chen Shui-bian in their race for Taipei mayor. Some people were even betting on the outcome as if it were a pro baseball game or a horse race. In southern Taiwan, both KMT and DPP candidates managed to draw attention as well.
The factors dominating the Taipei mayoral race were complicated. Hu Fu explains how studies have shown that 50 to 60 percent of Taiwan's voters ordinarily cast their votes based on a candidate's image and appearance; by contrast, only about 20 percent of the voters here make decisions according to the candidates' "beef" (meaning their views on public policies). Social relations and political party mobilization are also important, dominating factors in local elections. This time in Taipei, Ma and Chen were similar in three ways: both candidates' parties provided maximum support; both had steady supporters; and neither candidate spent much time introducing their beef.
Added to these factors were ethnic and national identity conflicts between Ma and Chen, their supporters, and the parties they represented. Ma is a so-called "mainlander," but Chen a "Taiwanese"; and Ma stands for the reunification of China (or at least maintaining the status quo), but Chen advocates Taiwan independence. There was even question as to which of the two candidates ROC President Lee Teng-hui liked better. These topics, regardless of whether they were rational, or of whether they had been brought up in the campaign activities, could determine the course of certain voters' decisions. Hu Fu argues that many people, for example, reasoned that if Chen were to win, the island would move one step closer to Taiwan independ ence. Those in favor of Taiwan independence thus voted for Chen, and those not in favor of independence did not vote for him. Questions of what a city mayor has to do with Taiwan independence and whether he has the power to do anything about it, for some reason, were not taken into consideration.
Intellectuals, the media, and enthusiastic citizens started to make all kinds of predictions as soon as Ma decided to step into the Taipei mayoral race in May 1998. Most of the pre-election discourses indicated that the results would be very close as to whether Ma or Chen would win. Yet to much surprise, Ma won with a margin of nearly 80 thousand votes, and the KMT joyfully "recovered" Taipei from the DPP. A comparison of voter turnout between the mayoral and city council elections shows that the major reason for Ma's victory was strategic voting by NP supporters. In the city council elections, the NP won more than 18 percent of the votes, but their candidate for Taipei mayor, Wang Chien-shien got just less than 3 percent of the votes. "The NP supporters knew Wang didn't have a chance, so they cast their votes for Ma," Hu Fu explains. "They didn't necessarily think Ma would be a better mayor than Wang, but they definitely didn't want to see another 4 years with Chen as mayor."
Even Wang himself knew he could not win. Nevertheless, he had repeatedly told his NP supporters that even if they gave up on him because of the increasing certainty of a win for Ma or Chen, they should at least take care of his hsiao-chi, his "little chicks"--meaning NP candidates who were running for other positions. Nine of these candidates entered the Taipei City Council, which maintains the political map there in a no-majority-party situation: the KMT has 23 seats, the DPP 19, and the NP 9.
Without the extra votes transferred from NP supporters, and without clear ideological conflicts between the candidates, the Kaohsiung mayoral race was much less complicated than the Taipei election. The result--the DPP's Frank Hsieh unseat ing the incumbent, the KMT's Wu Den-yih--was a total surprise. Throughout the race, propaganda salvos from each candi date were aimed at casting down the image of the other candidate. Judging from the election results, Frank Hsieh had apparently done a better job of highlighting Wu Den-yih's poor contribution to the city during his 8 years as mayor of Kaohsiung. "Kaohsiung citizens had waited a long time for the improvement of tap water quality, a city mass rapid transit system, and some other projects the city government had promised," Hu Fu says. "This time, they decided not to wait any longer. They agreed on 'it's time to change hands and let someone else try,' as Frank Hsieh's campaign slogan had put it."
Without the need for NP supporters' votes, however, the Kaohsiung City Council elections turned out as predicted: citizens decided to keep a KMT majority. So, except for the Kaohsiung and Taipei city councils, "changing hands" and "letting others try" turned out to be the main pattern throughout the December elections. Although there was no realigning of the basic structure of Taiwan's party politics, many heavyweight politicians or candidates with established reputations based on their administrative performances were replaced by new blood.
Whatever the results were, observers did see in the December elections some maturing of both candidates and voters. Campaigners and their supporters on the whole showed much more control than they had in previous elections, although they were even more passionate in the promotion of their causes; most candidates showed more respect to their opponents than they had in former years; and most of the candidates' banners and flags which, in the past, typically were not taken down for several weeks following the election, were removed from the streets the day after the elections in December. There were also positive changes in the campaigning process. Among them, the most notable was the presence of televised debates, along with a daily choice of talk shows and seminars with candidates' participation. Electronic media enabled more people to know more about the candidates, as well as about the election itself, and it will no doubt become the most important tool for publicity in future elections. It is, perhaps, many Taiwan people's sincere hope that in the future, they can learn something from their television sets--not necessarily about a candidate's personal sex life (as in other, more developed democracies), but some real beef.