Before too long, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) may look upon criticism from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as a quaint reminder of when politics was mostly about keeping other parties at bay.
Only days after taking up the chairmanship of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Ma is facing a dramatic challenge to his authority — and to party unity in general.
More than 20 KMT Central Standing Committee (CSC) members, both in the legislature and outside, will resign or are threatening to resign over the handling of recent CSC elections in which bribery loomed large and for which disciplinary action appears to have been selectively applied.
The irony is most palpable, given that Ma’s determination to resume the chairmanship was generated by dissatisfaction with errant legislators and his inability to coordinate on key policies. Now, he has more openly errant legislators to contend with, and not all are legislators-at-large and thus more accountable to party headquarters.
Ma has nascent enemies everywhere he looks. KMT hardliners never trusted him; KMT moderates are beginning to taste Ma’s lack of courage under fire (more pronounced now after Ma’s upbraiding of KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) for daring to speak her mind); the pro-China press in Taiwan has written aggressive commentaries on his administration and Ma personally; the pro-independence press is ramping up its attacks on Ma for deferring to China at every other opportunity; he remains at a dangerously low ebb in opinion polls; and even his supporters in the foreign think tank community are beginning to wonder if they backed the wrong horse.
Then there’s the DPP, of course, whose scattershot attacks on the president appear civilized by comparison, and the Chinese Communist Party, which has already fired warning shots at Ma in a number of publications for straying from its required course of cross-strait detente.
As long as the KMT chairmanship was in the hands of his predecessor, Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), Ma could search for a balance between limited control over the party’s machinations and limited blame for the party’s internal feuds, excesses and errors.
Now, everything is in his lap, and judging from the speed with which groups of legislators and CSC members have mobilized in response to the fallout from the CSC election, Ma will be hard pressed to stifle their voices, let alone block the political damage they are causing behind closed doors. One of those voices, most notably, belongs to Sean Lien (連勝文), son of former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰), whose shadow remains cast over proceedings.
The point must be made again: Ma’s difficulties stem partly from his weak leadership, and partly from the fact that the KMT has failed to transform itself from a strongman’s party to a democratic one in which interests extend beyond individual ambition and heady promises of largess.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was a consummate politician who led the party with a mixture of strongman conviction and democratic sensibilities.
Ma, who has neither quality, faces a political conundrum that is only beginning to be manifested in his day-to-day efforts: How do you control an individual, let alone a large political party, when you cannot inspire fear, you cannot sate greed and you cannot command respect?
Application of this question to relations with China should trigger even more concern, but for the moment, this will be the last thing on Ma’s mind as KMT members gird themselves for battle in a weakened party structure.
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