With the government under acute pressure over a series of gaffes and ill-judged or poorly promoted policies, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has been given an excellent opportunity to bounce back from its routing in the presidential and legislative elections.
The question that must be asked, then, is why the DPP has been conspicuous for its restraint if not silence over the last weeks as the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) embarks on an epic struggle between party headquarters and its presidential, executive and legislative wings.
DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has a scholastic and dedicated air, but as party leader she will need to develop a more hard-hitting presence if she is to combine party reform with oversight of the government and the KMT in the eyes of voters.
Even if the DPP cannot aim too high so soon in this presidential term, at the least it must seek to influence public discourse and make hay from the regular disruptions in relations between the KMT’s power bases.
Unlike the US, British, Canadian and Australian systems, for example, in which opposition parties have clear-cut leaders in various chambers, Taiwan’s political system allows the opposition party to have many voices but none that is definitive.
With caucus whips acting as party spokespeople but without the authority or mandate of the party chairperson, it can be difficult to get the message across consistently.
For this reason, and despite having pressing responsibilities of party reform, Tsai will need to play a more substantial role in criticizing specific legislation and legislative practices even though she is not a legislator.
The less-than-stellar DPP presence in the legislature makes this even more important.
Legislators Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮), Ko Chien-ming (柯建銘) and Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) may be among the more authoritative opposition members, and they do make an effort to feed the media’s appetite for sound bites, but none has the charisma or general level of public support to act as a clear-cut legislative leader.
The KMT is doing the DPP some real favors, even though the latter is not capitalizing on this. A diffusion of political power across various official and party centers means that individual voices have become less representative and still less authoritative.
The president is an exception; he and the vice president are the only officials directly elected by the nation as a whole. But former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰), current Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) are party to a reconfiguring of power in the KMT and the government. Each of these men is ambitious and highly active, but none is serving in a position that has a national mandate — though Wang may argue differently, having been elected by a majority of legislators to run the lawmaking body. One way or another, their various interests are weakening the party’s ability — or at least the public perception of its ability — to function as a team in the service of the country.
A strong opposition voice is a necessary presence in a healthy democracy. The DPP would do well to consider the ramifications of letting the governing party take the lead on criticism of the government’s performance and hog the limelight with its intrigues.
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