The Republic of China Presidential Election

The Second Round

Publish Date: 03/01/2004
Story Type: POLITICS; PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2004
Byline: PAT GAO AND LEANNE KAO

The Democratic Progressive Party unseated
the ruling power four years ago. Now, facing
challenges from a unified opposition camp,
does President Chen Shui-bian have a chance
to secure a mandate to carry forward his
party's reform platform and carry on the
fight for a new Taiwanese identity?

Four years ago, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ended half a century of rule by the Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalist Party, in a three-way race that left the KMT bickering and divided and the DPP in possession of the Presidential Office. Chen's victory was bittersweet. After struggling for most of his life as an opposition leader, he led his 14-year-old party, once an outlawed group, to the highest office in the nation. Yet, because the race divided the vote between three candidates, the KMT leader, Lien Chan, vice president under former president Lee Teng-hui, and James Soong, who split from the KMT to run as an independent, Chen lacked a majority and had to put the brakes on many of his long-held ambitions.

Chen's election, nonetheless, was remarkable. He trounced his KMT rival, who finished an unequivocal third in the race and squeaked by Soong by 300,000 votes. It was the first transition to an opposition party in the history of the Republic of China, and letters of congratulations poured in from around the world praising Taiwan's peaceful transition of power and the beginning of a truly democratic system of government. "Taiwan has stood up," Chen declared exuberantly at the inaugural ceremony.

Four years later, Chen is in the fight of his life. The same candidates have come forward again to win the Presidential Office with one stark difference. Soong and Lien have united their followers and fielded a joint ticket to recover the "blue sky"--blue being the color of the opposition forces which hope to oust the DPP and its supporters, which together form the green camp. Looking at the election results four years ago, a combined Lien-Soong ticket would appear to be unbeatable. Together, their votes in 2000 totaled nearly 60 percent of the vote, and the election in 1998 of the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou as mayor of Taipei, arguably the second most important political position in Taiwan, with pan-blue support, indicates trouble for Chen. The race, however, is too close to call, and Chen is proving tougher to oust than anyone had expected.

One of the reasons for Chen's surprisingly high standing in pre-election polls is the enmity between the two candidates on the blue ticket. "They libeled each other bitterly during the 2000 election campaign," says Su Tseng-chang, Taipei County commissioner and DPP campaign manager for the 2004 presidential reelection bid. And according to Su, the candidates also have a case of sour grapes, having never accepted their defeat the first time around.

Su remembers attending US President George Bush's inauguration on a cold snowy morning and seeing former vice-president and democratic presidential nominee Al Gore standing by Bush during the inauguration. Gore, who won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote, accepted defeat despite his victory in sheer votes. Su was deeply impressed by this acceptance of the democratic system. "But our two losers have never accepted the election results," Su says. "Their absence from Chen's inauguration augured the ensuing years of political disquiet."

Su is referring partly to the rancorous relationship between the Presidential Office and the legislature, which is controlled by a blue majority, made up of KMT legislators and their allies in the People First Party (PFP), the party that James Soong formed after his strong showing as an independent candidate in 2000.

Pan-blue attacks on Chen's new administration started almost immediately after he took office, and early on a particularly bitter fight broke out over the construction of a fourth nuclear power plant in Taiwan. Chen's campaign platform had included strong environmental policies, and when he proposed to cancel the construction of the nuclear power plant, the opposition cried foul and called for his removal from office.

Su concludes that only after Chen's reelection will his rivals accept that they must learn to work with an opposition leader even if they control the legislature. Chen said as much in his nomination speech for the upcoming election, in which he vowed that his reelection would put the parties back on track and allow democracy to forge ahead along a more productive path.

The green camp is hoping that voters will remember the uncooperative response in the legislature to Chen's victory at election time. Moreover, they are not missing a chance to point out the difficulties in the joint KMT-PFP ticket.

"The KMT and PFP can never form a real stable union," predicts Pochih Chen, chairman of the Taiwan Thinktank, a non-profit research institute established in 2001. On the other hand, if Chen wins and the DPP victory spurs a legislative victory at the year-end elections for the pan-green camp, he expects a more stable and workable administration.

To give voters a clear idea of where he would take the nation if reelected to a second term, Chen has outlined the party's platform for the upcoming election. The gloves, in other words, are coming off. Long restricted in his ability to implement core DPP policies because of his lack of a popular victory in the last election, Chen is in essence telling voters just what he would like to do if they give him another term in office. In the past months, the DPP has introduced a referendum bill in the legislature that would allow for a popular vote on fundamental issues facing the country and avoid the gridlock of party squabbling. The referendum proposal is a key policy in Chen's reform agenda, indicated by his campaign slogan "Trust Taiwan and Uphold Reform."

The constitution is a topic that lawmakers have long feared to discuss because it involves sensitive issues, such as the ultimate status of Taiwan in relation to China. That the constitution drafted while the Nationalist government was still in China does not reflect the reality of Taiwan today is undoubted, but redrafting it would require consensus by the public on fundamental issues of sovereignty, foreign relations, and the long-term future of Taiwan that politicians have never before been willing to tackle.

Sensing popular support for some version of a referendum, the opposition pan-blue camp came out in support of a watered-down version of a referendum, handing a policy victory to Chen and the DPP just months before the election. "They are leaning toward our standpoint probably for purely political reasons," says Chen Chi-mai, a DPP legislator. "Whereas we have our system of beliefs for the referendum in a logical line of conceptual development, I don't see them outlining a clear vision for Taiwan's future."

To capitalize on the growing support for a referendum, Chen plans to hold a peace referendum on election day to condemn China's rapid buildup of missiles across the Taiwan Strait aimed at the island. Chen's plan, however, has raised concerns not only from China, but traditional allies such as the United States and Japan, who are content with the status quo and would like to see the question left to the future.

For Pochih Chen, this tension is part of a bargaining process among friends. "We must get used to such tensions if we want to become a normal country," he says. "Politicians must carefully consider all possible results to lessen the fallout, but still, we ought to clearly voice our own position."

Pochih Chen says that the DPP is trying to get some traction on economic issues in the run-up to the election. He claims that the opposition has unfairly held the president responsible for the economic slump of the past few years. He points out that the start of Chen's administration coincided with the first major US economic downturn in a decade as well as a global recession caused by the bursting of the high-tech economic bubble. He says the recent economic setbacks are even worse than the energy crisis of the early 1970s and represent the gravest economic downturn since the world depression that started in the 1930s. In 2000, Taiwan's exports registered a 17 percent rise from the previous year, only to drop by 8 percent in 2001. This means a total decline in exports of 25 percent, accompanied by an 8 percent fall of the economic growth rate. Pochih Chen says that these figures correspond to boom-and-slump cycles, which began in the early 1970s, where every 3 percent drop of exports kills 1 percent of economic growth.

Taiwan's economy is highly dependant on exports, and when the US and other major importers of Taiwan-made products stop buying, it is hard for Taiwan not to slump with the consumer markets in foreign economies. "But opposition parties and academics indiscreetly blame the economic setbacks solely on the DPP government," Pochih Chen says, "and try to impress people that the ruling party is inept at dealing with economic matters. In fact, many economic and financial officials who worked for the KMT government have stayed in their offices."

Pochih Chen also takes the offensive when looking at KMT-PFP economic proposals outlined in their campaign, specifically the promise to balance the national budget in a six-year period. He says that this would require a drastic tax increase that would drag the economy further down. Chen suggests instead gradually increasing the tax revenue from the current 13 percent to 18 percent of the GDP over a ten-year period. "The balancing of the budget, however, is not really the point," he says. "We just have to make sure that the government's debts won't represent an even greater portion of the GDP in the future."

The economic issues are certain to be a primary consideration in voters' minds when they go to the polls. In recent months, the US has been experiencing an economic recovery, and good financial news has been picking up in Taiwan, giving the DPP a much needed boost in this area. "Polls show that we're gaining support from important age groups, namely 30- to 50-year-old people," says Chen Chi-mai, a legislator from the southern city of Kaohsiung. "Voters have also seen our achievement in reducing banks' non-performing loans by more than NT$800 billion (US$23.5 billion)." Such financial problems are a legacy from the old regime, he adds, and the DPP will insist on comprehensive reforms in all areas, "for reform is one of the DPP's central beliefs."

The DPP is trying to emphasize the historic causes of these economic problems, which stretch back before their tenure. "We're trying to put out the fire," says Su Tseng-chang, the DPP campaign manager. "And you can't blame firefighters for the flames."

In addition to fighting a rearguard action over the economy, the ruling party is also outlining an economic stimulus package for future economic growth. The Executive Yuan, headed by the premier, who is appointed by the president, has outlined ten new major construction projects, which will put some NT$500 billion (US$14.7 billion) in investments into transportation, large-scale construction, and other infrastructure projects. Pochih Chen argues that Taiwan's infrastructure spending has lagged behind other developed countries and even some developing countries. By increasing public spending, President Chen has vowed to raise the overall expenditure on research and development-related sectors to over 3 percent of the GDP in three years, cut the unemployment rate to below 4 percent in two years, and boost the economic growth rate to above 5 percent in a year. The DPP, in other words, is drawing up plans they believe will capitalize on the recent economic recovery and spur Taiwan's growth for years to come.

After the landmark shift of the ruling power four years ago, the DPP looks on the presidential election this month as a critical test of "democratic consolidation," as President Chen puts it. "If A-bian [President Chen] is reelected, Beijing would have to acknowledge the situation and the cross-Strait relationship would become more stable," says Su Tseng-chang, the campaign manager. "Before that happens, we must raise our own voices through the vote so that the international community will support Taiwan's democratic reforms and the emerging awareness of the independent national identity of the Taiwanese people."