It’s taken a few months, but with today’s rally in Taipei the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) finally has the chance to gain real ground at the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s expense. The success of the rally, however, will not hinge on any recent increase in support for the DPP but on bipartisan dismay at President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) leadership and his handling of China and the global financial crisis.
There is an important distinction to be made between the two. The DPP, under Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) leadership, is attempting to rebuild itself after punishing losses in presidential and legislative elections. Weighed down by years of vision-free leadership, the party has a lot to do before the next local elections, and six months has not been enough time for Tsai to demonstrate changes in grassroots attitudes toward the DPP’s clunky structures, insularity and disunity.
Making things more difficult for the DPP is former president Chen Shui-bian’s near-quixotic insistence on participating in today’s proceedings, an action meant to fight back against the prosecutors on his tail as much as to express solidarity with ordinary people in a just cause.
Yet few of these problems are of genuine concern to those — DPP members or otherwise — who will be next in the firing line when the financial crisis shuts factories, annuls annual bonuses and dries up lines of credit and government spending on welfare and other support mechanisms.
The DPP should be grateful, therefore, that the KMT administration’s performance has been so slipshod and slovenly that its own woes appear petty in comparison.
If the rally is to mean anything to the DPP in the longer term, it must do what it can to aggravate government wounds and pressure Ma, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) and the Cabinet into forging a more accountable administration, not least on cross-strait policy.
At some point, in the wake of a successful rally, the DPP must begin to outline explicit policy alternatives that illustrate what the KMT government is doing wrong and why.
The KMT may feel comforted that the Chinese Communist Party has lent it support in the first phase of Ma’s term.
But the KMT stands warned: Cross-strait developments born of ossified ideology that are perceived to exacerbate unemployment at a time of marked economic apprehension will come back to haunt it at the next elections.
The participation of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and his Taiwan Solidarity Union acolytes in similar activities today suggests the rally has the potential to appeal to a broader base than previous DPP protests. Indeed, Tsai and her advisers should be delighted if the crowd is boosted by people of unpredictable political affiliation.
The challenge for Tsai and the DPP is not just to improve its prospects and invigorate party members, but also to assist in the debunking of KMT hardliners and their China-worship in the eyes of the average KMT voter by broadening the appeal of the larger message.
Stressful times can open up new space for political change. This is one of those times, and it is an opportunity that the DPP, with all of its problems, really cannot afford to waste.
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