Old guard facing historic defeat
Socially-conscious new generation poised to oust pro-Chinese ruling party in election
KTAIPEI, Taiwan awlo Iyun Pacidal walked into a local government meeting in Taipei a little over a month ago to speak out against a playground for stray dogs. Planned for a site on Taiwan’s east coast, the project’s land is also claimed by one of the island’s indigenous groups, the Amis. For Kawlo, an Amis activist, the dog park is just another case of a government, drawn overwhelmingly from the island’s Han Chinese ethnic majority, infringing on indigenous land rights.
But Kawlo is about to switch roles from protester to politician. She is the top candidate in Taiwan’s Jan. 16 national election for the New Power Party (NPP)— a party dominated by ambitious young activists.
The NPP has become Taiwan’s third most popular party in less than a year, reflecting a fresh wind blowing through Taiwan’s long-stultified political landscape. Its energetic young members are campaigning not only to distance Taiwan further from mainland China, but with a political agenda focused on civil liberties and human rights — including Kawlo’s indigenous land rights.
Taiwanese elections have long been a clash between the incumbent ruling Kuomintang (KMT) — the nationalist party of Chiang Kai-shek, who fled to the island after his 1949 defeat on the Chinese mainland by Mao Zedong’s Communists — and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which ousted the KMT from the presidency for the first time in 2000.
If the polls are right, the KMT is about to suffer a historic defeat at the hands of the DPP. The DPP leader, 59-year-old Tsai Ing-wen, is set to not only win the presidency again but also, for the first time since 1949, to oust the KMT from a majority in parliament. Taiwanese will vote for one of three presidential candidates, and for the 113-seat parliament — casting one vote for a candidate in their electoral district, and one vote for a nationwide party.
Support for the KMT has been eroding for years, and 2014 saw the party suffer a landslide defeat in local and regional elections. In the past eight years, President Ma Ying-jeou has focused on strengthening ties with China. But the opposition DPP leader, Tsai Ing-wen, says that it has left Taiwan too vulnerable to China.
The straw that broke the KMT’s back came in March 2014, when students and civic groups occupied the parliament for days while hundreds of thousands rallied outside against a trade pact with China. The protest, known as the Sunflower Movement, became a vehicle for anger over President Ma’s cosy relationship with the mainland.
China, which still sees the island as a renegade province, is watching the elections closely. The DPP has long pressed for recognition from the United Nations as a sovereign country. But while the DPP condemns the nationalists’ cosy relationship with China, Tsai Ing-wen has assured Taiwan’s allies, notably the U.S., that she would not destabilize the region.
The NPP formed after the Sunflower Movement, an eclectic mix of civic activists who take a more radical position on Taiwan’s independence.
But while the NPP does emphasize Taiwan’s distinctive identity and independence from China, its rhetoric is more pro-Taiwan rather than anti-China. The NPP and other smaller, so-called “third force” parties, “are marketing themselves (as) representatives of the social movement scene,” said Dafydd Fell, director of the Taiwan Studies Centre at the School for Oriental and African Studies in London, in an email interview. The NPP has focused on domestic issues such as forced land evictions, government transparency, the legalization of same-sex marriage and indigenous land rights.
“There has been a gradual shift in a large number of cultural values in the last (two to three) decades,” said Fell, due to an active civic society, “such as a strong women’s movement, gay rights movement, (and) links to political parties.”.
“The issues (third force parties) are raising are very salient in this election, but for that reason they have also been adopted by the DPP,” said Jonathan Sullivan, a Taiwan specialist at the University of Nottingham.
Even if the NPP fails to win seats in the legislature, it has already transformed Taiwan’s politics by providing a new generation of civic activists a vehicle to take their causes from the barricades to the ballot box.