The KMT primary, the first ever conducted in the 94-year history of the party, is viewed as a major breakthrough in the politics of the ROC on Taiwan by both government and KMT officials. In fact, the July primaries are widely regarded as signs of greater democracy developing in both the KMT and in the DPP, which also used this democratic institution to choose its December candidates.
Even though the other new political parties, currently numbering around 40, have yet to follow suit, there is no question that the mid-summer primaries held by the island's two major parties were in tune with the prevailing demands in society for greater democratization.
The KMT's primaries were taken seriously by the party's membership, as became clear when more than 900,000 KMT members cast their ballots at 1,250 polling stations. Voter turnout was 46 per cent, quite high when compared with the 30 percent average voter turnout in states holding primaries in the United States. After the balloting, the KMT held party meetings to evaluate the pri;mary results, and the final slate of party nominees was drawn up on August 16.
The KMT named 212 party candidates to vie for the 293 political positions up for election in the Legislative Yuan, the Taiwan Provincial Assembly, the Taipei and Kaohsiung city councils, and at the mayoral and county magistrate level. For tactical political reasons, the KMT did not put up candidates for all open seats.
(The mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung are appointed by the President rather than being elected because these two major cities are rated as special municipalities directly under the jurisdiction of the central government's Executive Yuan; the President also appoints the Taiwan provincial governor, which is the reason these important officials are left out of the present discussion.)
The accompanying table gives details on the number of KMT nominees and the number of seats open for election at each level of government. The table covers only one of the three central parliamentary bodies, the Legislative Yuan, because representatives from the other two bodies, the National Assembly and the Control Yuan, are not up for election this year.
What motivated the KMT to hold primaries this year instead of continuing its previous nomination practices? Beginning with the late 1940s, when the ROC moved to Taiwan, all KMT candidates were named by the next higher echelon. Later, the views of local party cadres were taken into consideration, and beginning with the 1983 election, a kind of quasi-primary called "party-member opinion responses" was established to nominate party candidates.
The results of evaluations by local cadres and the "party-member opinion responses" have never been published, and no objective standards or justifications have ever been made public for past nominations. The KMT nominating process was thus in reality a "black box" in which candidates were in most cases named by the party's highest echelons with little input from party members at the basic level.
This top-down nomination system was in line with the traditional patriarchal and authoritarian style of leadership within the party. The system worked well as long as the party faced no competition or challenges from an organized opposition. But the rapid political changes of recent years have made it necessary to change the old nomination system. As a competitive party system began to take shape, the ruling party found itself challenged by an assertive and articulate opposition. Internal party changes occurred as well. More and more party members at the grassroots and middle-echelon levels stepped forward to claim their right of participation in determining who should run as the ruling party's candidates.
At this point, some KMT officials, including John Kuan, deputy secretary general of the party and director of its Organization Department, thought that it was time to change the old top-down nomination system into one that involved party members at all levels. In line with this thinking, the possibility of establishing a primary system was raised in the KMT's 13th National Congress in July 1988.
Further steps toward establishing a democratic party system took place when the Legislative Yuan approved a revised Civic Organizations Law on January 20, 1989 and when a revision of the Public Officials Election and Recall Law was promulgated on January 26, 1989. The former was an essential step in preparing the legal environment for democratization because it legalized the formation and activity of multiple political parties for the first time in the history of China. The Election and Recall Law was no less important. It established for the first time the rules of the game for electoral competition between different political parties.
The possibility of genuine competition between parties had developed for some time, even before these laws were passed. The DPP was formed on September 28, 1986, in defiance of then effective martial law (which was lifted on July 15, 1987), and it remained technically illegal until May this year. At that time, it registered with the Interior Ministry in accordance with the newly-revised Civic Organizations Law, which made it possible for the party to enter a slate of candidates in the December elections. The year-end elections will be the first critical test of strength for both the KMT and the DPP under this new legal framework.
The new KMT primary system is only one part of the "Guidelines for Party Reform" passed during the party's 13th National Congress, while most of the other planned reforms have yet to be implemented. KMT officials note that the main purpose of holding primaries is to involve all party members in the decision-making process and strengthen the representative nature and legitimacy of party candidates. It is generally felt that the primary system is also intended to improve the party's chances of winning more seats and public offices in the year-end parliamentary and local elections than it did three years ago.
By increasing the participation of party members in the nomination process, the KMT expects to strengthen ties and loyalty to the party. The KMT currently has approximately 2.5 million members, accounting for more than 10 percent of the population in Taiwan. In the parliamentary and local elections three years ago, it won the support of 70 percent of the votes, or of 5,370,000 voters.
Altogether, 670 KMT members registered to run in the primaries by June 15, the deadline for registration. They included 164 politicians competing for district supplementary legislative seats, 90 for the aboriginal and professional groups' legislative seats, 153 for Taiwan Provincial Assembly seats, 81 for Taipei Municipal Council seats, 71 for Kaohsiung Municipal Council seats, and 81 for county magistrates and city mayor posts.
Comparing the number of nominees (212) with the number of aspirants (670) who registered to run in the primaries, the rate of participation (a little more than three times) was quite high. In order to contain the so-called "participation explosion" within a manageable range, the KMT set up several primary regulations in addition to the eligibility requirements stipulated by the Public Officials Election and Recall Law. To qualify, for example, aspirants had to have experience in a non-paid party post such as cell leader or above and had to be endorsed by at least 0.5 percent to 1 percent of the party members in the county or city executive primaries—or, in the case of legislative primaries, 0.2 percent to 0.5 percent of the party members in an election district. Without these additional requirements, the participation rate in the KMT's first primaries would have been even higher.
The KMT sponsored several forums in each election district for the aspirants to solicit support during the primaries. No one was allowed to hold self-sponsored rallies, which was done in an attempt to prevent the primaries from becoming like the American-style "money politics" approach to primaries and to avoid serious divisions within the party. The aspirants were also asked to sign a covenant pledging not to resort to bribery or violence and to refrain from making personal attacks during campaigning.
One of the chief architects of the party's new nomination system is John Kuan. Earlier this year, he said that he expected more than 90 percent of those elected in the primaries to be nominated as KMT candidates for the December elections. "We will respect and accept the results of the primaries, which represent the views of grassroots party members," he claimed.
Kuan kept his word: about 90 percent of the nominations were based totally on the outcome of the primaries. But what of the remaining 10 percent? These deviations from the primary results were made in electoral districts where less than half of the party members went to the polls. The fact is that out of 2.5 million KMT members, only 1.98 million were eligible to vote in the primaries this year. Since the eligible primary voters amounted to only a portion of the population, and if less than half of the eligible members went to polls in a given electoral district, doubts could be raised as to the degree to which the results reflect the preferred choices of the whole electorate.
Many characteristics can be discerned by examining the list of KMT nominees. They are quite young, with an average age of about 46. Most of them are well-educated: 18 hold Ph.D. degrees, 41 earned M.A. degrees, and 119 are college graduates. Among the 212 nominees, 33 are women, a proportion much higher than in previous elections.
Of those nominees, a little over half are incumbents and a slightly lesser number are completely new faces to the political scene. The proportion of turnover in December will be the highest since elections were first held in Taiwan in 1947. With so much new blood injected into the political decision-making process, the ROC political system cannot help but be changed.
To achieve the goals of openness, fairness, and equality in the primaries, KMT officials were required to remain aloof and not favor one would-be candidate over another. Party officials who are themselves seeking public office in the upcoming elections were required to resign their party posts before running in the primaries. Despite these efforts, the primary campaign was still marred by accusations of vote-buying in some districts and by allegations that the ruling party had a list of preferred candidates who were assisted from behind the scenes by party officials.
Both KMT Secretary General James Soong and John Kuan denied the allegations about a preferred list. "If we indeed had such a list," said Soong in an interview before the primaries, "we wouldn't have to hold primaries, would we?" As John Kuan pointed out in another interview, although the KMT did not have any such list, it is true that a few local party activists sometimes help a certain candidate because of their personal preferences or friendships.
As expected from a first attempt, some controversies arose about the KMT's primary system. At least two incumbent mayors withdrew from the primaries because it was alleged that party officials hinted they preferred other candidates. Taichung mayor Chang Tzu-yuan, after being dogged by rumors that he profited from land speculation, resigned from his mayoral post on July 17 to become vice-chairman of the Commission on National Corporations. (Had Chang been found guilty, he would have been required to resign from his mayoral position immediately; in this case, the party assigned him to a higher post.)
In the other case, Hsinchu mayor Jen Fu-yung tearfully announced his withdrawal from the primary on July 20 "for the sake of party unity," as he phrased it. In fact, it was alleged that he was abandoned by the KMT because of his poor performance during his tenure as mayor. In a recent poll, he had received the second lowest popularity rating among Taiwan's 23 mayors and county magistrates.
The KMT's regulations concerning the percentage of voter turnout necessary to nominate during the primary made many candidates uneasy after the rates in all areas were disclosed. Some candidates who were popular in the primary elections were afraid that they might be dropped from the list of nominees because voter turnouts in their areas were below 50 percent, whereas those who received fewer votes in the primaries still had hopes that they could be nominated because their opponents were not necessarily the preferred nominees of the local party organizations.
As a result, the regulations caused many difficulties for the local party organizations after the primaries because many candidates visited their local offices to inquire about whether they were on the list of nominees. This problem will no doubt be mulled over by the party when it considers revisions in the regulations prior to the next set of elections.
The KMT was not alone in being plagued by all sorts of controversies during the primaries—the DPP had its own share of difficulties. When the DPP followed the KMT's lead by holding primaries on the same day, its leaders hoped to gain an edge with what they called "a real democratic primary." Pronouncements aside, the party at least succeeded in generating publicity for itself and creating a more favorable atmosphere for the year-end elections. Cultivating voters is of key importance for the DPP because of its comparatively small membership.
Although the DPP has only 19,000 members, it was able to win 22 percent of the total vote (i.e., the support of 1,690,000 voters) in the 1986 parliamentary elections. Its leaders have been predicting larger gains in December, which made the party's own primary quite important.
The DPP announced that it would accept the primary winners as its candidates, not just use the results for reference. But long before the primary process began, DPP chairman Huang Hsin-chieh had already made public his own list of preferred candidates for county magistrates and mayors. After the registration by the aspirants, the DPP also began a process called "coordination" during which some non-targeted aspirants were talked out of running.
Just as political struggle among local KMT factions is not uncommon in Taiwan, the DPP found itself embroiled in its own factional struggles because of its primaries. The mass media gave these considerable publicity. For example, a dispute between legislator Ju Gau-jeng and Huang Erh-hsuan, former secretary general of the DPP, occurred when both of them declared their intention to compete for the legislative seat in Yunlin County. The dispute aggravated the relationship between the two main factions within the DPP—the "Formosan faction" led by Huang Hsin-chieh, which advocates democracy first, Taiwan independence later; and the "New Movement faction" led by Yao Chia-wen, former chairman of the DPP, which regards Taiwan independence as the top priority among its main causes. The dispute became so heated that some political observers thought that the party might actually split.
The Formosan faction includes most of the incumbent DPP public officials who have a certain degree of popular support. The New Movement faction is composed of more radical DPP activists. The former can be called the "unorganized majority," whereas the latter can be called the "organized minority." The New Movement faction controls some of the DPP's local party headquarters, such as the ones in Yunlin and Taoyuan Counties, and is in a position to recruit some "shadow party members" right before the primary to vote a given way and thus influence the primary results.
Huang Erh-hsuan, who is aligned with the New Movement faction, was reported to have introduced some 200 shadow members into his primary constituency. Ju Gau-jeng, who is aligned with the Formosan faction, threatened to split with the party and run on his own. The DPP primary in Yunlin was postponed to August 6 in order to allow time to settle this dispute. But the split between the two men seemed irreversible when the results showed that Huang had won the primary after Ju declared early on that he was dropping out of the primary. Ju is said to be continuing his campaign in spite of having lost the primary to Huang.
On July 23, about 70 percent of the DPP members voted to nominate 48 candidates from a field of 52. Since the competition was not very keen except for a few districts, the DPP's primary elections proceeded quietly for the most part.
The DPP's primaries were given almost equal media attention as the KMT's, but this was a mixed blessing. The primaries put the DPP in the KMT's shoes in some respects. All the accusations of wrongdoing formerly attributed only to the KMT this time emerged in the DPP's own primary elections as well. The problems of the DPP were even more serious because of its smaller membership and the party's two-faction struggle.
Some of the primary results surprised both parties. In Taichung City, for example, the reputed KMT-favored candidate, Legislator Hung Chao-nan, lost to the city's former mayor Lin Po-jung in the race for the party's nomination for magistrate.
In another case, Cheng Yung-fa, speaker of the Penghu County Council, who renounced his membership in the KMT to protest alleged unfairness in the party's primaries, won in the primary race anyhow. Altogether, seven reputed KMT-preferred candidates for county magistrate or mayor lost their primaries, reflecting a strong backlash among voters who were dissatisfied with the arrangements made by local cadres prior to the elections.
The DPP faced similar circumstances. In its primary for Taoyuan County representative to the Legislative Yuan, legislator Hsu Kuo-tai, brother of dissident Hsu Hsin-liang, lost by a tiny margin. Two relatively unknown new faces—Lin Hsi-mo and Wu Pao-yu collected 101 and 90 votes respectively and defeated Hsu, who got only 83 votes.
Actually, Hsu had won more than 100,000 votes in Taoyuan County in the last election. There are therefore just grounds for the doubts of those who ask how can a OPP primary involving only 277 members deny Hsu's claim of popular support among the larger electorate. It was reported that the DPP's central executive committee decided to drop Wu and nominate Lin and Hsu despite their commitment to respect the primary results.
In another surprise result, former Legislator Huang Tien-fu, a member of the DPP's Formosan faction and younger brother of the DPP chairman Huang Hsin-chieh, lost in the Taipei City primary for legislative seats, finishing last among four candidates.
Both parties saw a relatively larger number of active and loyal members go to the polls for the primaries. Thus, the DPP's active New Movement faction gained seats beyond the proportion of its strength within the DPP. In the KMT, special party organizations for the armed forces, retired servicemen, and government and public enterprise employees are highly organized and disciplined. Therefore, most of the candidates backed by these special organizations won their primary elections.
Many sons of so-called "political families" or the offspring of powerful men also campaigned in the primaries. Relatives of the presidents of the Legislative, Judicial, and Control Yuans won in the KMT primaries without generating much criticism and opposition. But Lee Ching-hua, son of Premier Lee Huan, was not as fortunate. He finally withdrew from the primary in part because he wanted to fulfill his filial duty and free his father from pressures about his candidacy. Besides, being a strong candidate for a legislative seat in the southern district of Taipei City, he was regarded as a "super-threat" by other candidates, who thought that he should not compete with them so that the elections would be open for candidates without such powerful connections.
In line with a development found in other democratic societies, media celebrities also entered the political arena. TV variety show host Tien Wen-chung, TV reporter Chou Chuan, and popular singer Chang Chih-min, who is known as Chang Ti, also won in the KMT primaries.
Many shortcomings emerged in the primaries of both parties, such as factional struggles, lists of preferred candidates, personal attacks via rumors, gift-giving, outright bribery, and heavy influence by special party organizations and activists. Such practices developed during the earlier decades of elections in Taiwan, and they have now evolved further in the multi-party environment. This has worried many people who think that the primaries have caused more problems in electoral politics than they have solved.
Some scholars also point out that allowing members to vote for up to half of the contested seats is no less than encouraging the incumbents to form coalitions or alliances, a situation that" prevents new faces from emerging. They suggest that the system be changed to a "multiple candidate single ballot" format to bring it into line with the regular election system. Others even suggest that primaries should also be regulated by the Public Officials Election and Recall Law, and a ceiling should be established for each candidate's primary campaign funds so that the primaries will not evolve into American style money-oriented primaries.
In the final analysis, despite some shortcomings, the primaries held by the two parties were a successful test of internal party democracy. Although this cannot substitute for democratic practices in the interactions between parties, the primaries at least helped move both parties away from authoritarian party structures.
Democracy is of course not a perfect system, but it has the fewest shortcomings when it comes to choosing public officials. Its basic principle is that those who govern should be selected by those who are governed. Through trial and error, the primary system in Taiwan, as in other democratic societies, can be improved through practice. But it is already clear that politicians who seek public office must now gain the support of rank and file party members, not just higher level party officials. Seen in this light, the controversies surrounding the first primary elections in Taiwan's history can be welcomed as a constructive development. —Dr. Wu Wen-Cheng is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Soochow University and Dr. Chen I-hsin is an associate professor in the Graduate Institute of American Studies at Tamkang University.