Former secretary-general of the Presidential Office Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟) has joined the supporters of former senior presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming’s (辜寬敏) bid for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairmanship. Chen echoed Koo’s suggestion that the party’s 5.44 million supporters be consolidated, and called on the DPP not to follow the middle road because the party should meet the expectations of the 5.44 million people who voted for it. DPP Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮), another candidate for the top DPP job, has also placed holding on to these key voters at the heart of his bid for the chairmanship.
No DPP members would deny the importance of consolidating the party’s existing supporters. But the question is why these 5.44 million people voted for the DPP. What can the party do to hang onto these supporters?
Over the past 20 years, there have been great changes in the structure of DPP support. Pro-Taiwanese intellectuals, young people and the urban middle class were the backbone of early DPP support. Rural voters in central and southern Taiwan were not attracted to the party until the late 1990s or even later, after it took power.
Latecomers did not give the party their support because of its abstract idealistic promotion of Taiwanese independence but because its policies placed more importance on the balance between north and south and on the interests of farmers and workers, such as pensions for farmers. The success of local DPP governments also won the party support and votes.
This kind of support, however, is not very stable because it is attached to the party’s political promises and government resources. As long as president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) can maintain a strategy balancing the north and south, it won’t be too difficult for him to completely turn the tables on the DPP over the next few years. We may know the outcome after the county commissioner and city mayor elections at the end of next year — the most optimistic forecast is that the DPP will lose just two seats, while the worst case-scenario is that it will disappear altogether.
However, the long-term supporters have remained loyal as they have a deeper understanding of and have thought more about the characteristics of a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government and Taiwan’s historical development. Their feeling is that however unsatisfactory the DPP’s performance may have been, it is still superior to that of the KMT.
These people are idealistic supporters who demand that the politicians they support meet certain standards. They do not think that Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) — or the ministry’s former secretary-general Chuang Kuo-rong (莊國榮) — represent localization, or that integrity issues should be covered up by the sovereignty issue. They have tried to influence their friends to support the DPP, but when they are ridiculed for the party’s actions, they won’t launch a strong defense but just reply with silence.
These supporters have been voting with tears in their eyes in recent years. They are like victims of domestic violence — although mentally and physically traumatized, they are still unwilling to abandon their abuser. But if the perpetrator declares that they remain because they like to be mistreated and thus should continue to be mistreated, they must come out and protest.
Even if the DPP could maintain the support of these 5.44 million voters, it cannot become a meaningful party. The reason is simple: Even if these supporters vote with tears in their eyes, it is not very likely that others will start to vote for the DPP. Swing voters will ask why they should vote for the DPP if its core followers barely support it.
Thus if the DPP cannot satisfy its existing supporters, it won’t be able to garner the extra 1 million voters needed to win an election. In the past multi-member district system, the party could maintain 40 percent of the legislative seats, but under the current single-member district system, it will not obtain more than 25 percent of the seats. Would the public then care who the chairman of the party is?
Political parties should make meeting the expectations of existing supporters a priority. This is the rule of thumb in politics.
The DPP’s problem is not that it focuses too much on current supporters, but that it doesn’t satisfy them at all. Instead, it drains them of all their sympathy to hijack their vote, thus keeping other voters out.
If we think that we can go on doing this, we are taking the Taiwanese people in general, and the party’s 5.44 million supporters in particular, for fools.
Liang Wen-chieh is former deputy director of the DPP’s Policy Research and Coordinating Committee.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG
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