Representatives of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) met on Saturday to discuss a possible “blue-white alliance” to defeat the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in January’s presidential election.
Former Taipei deputy mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), representing the TPP, and former KMT secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), the campaign manager of KMT presidential candidate New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), discussed how the potential alliance could decide which candidate would be at the top of the ticket, and which would be the vice presidential candidate: Hou or TPP Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
Neither side was going to go into the negotiations in good faith. For observers it was simply a game of unraveling exactly how one side was trying to take advantage of the other. This was not about discovering what voters wanted — it was about skewing the game.
The TPP wanted the decision to be made based on telephone opinion polls, conducted by five agencies, half to landline numbers and half to mobile phones; the KMT favored primary ballots throughout the nation. It was no surprise that they were unable to reach an agreement.
Transparency is a good thing, and the two sides were certainly being transparent about their intentions.
Given the respective resources available to the two parties, the TPP’s suggestion is the more reasonable, although it does have a hidden bias with the stipulation of mobile phone interviews, ensuring that young voters are included, as this is the demographic among which polls have shown Ko’s support is strongest.
The KMT’s proposal plays to its own strengths of organizational depth and national distribution, and against the TPP’s weaknesses as a new party still finding its organizational feet.
The KMT would in no way countenance a deal in which it would go into the process at a disadvantage; this is no “gentleman’s game.” Indeed, it has far more to lose in this than the TPP.
If the TPP loses the election with Ko at the top of the ticket, he would still have made an impact and will have whipped up some support, and the party might even pick up a few legislative seats.
If Ko plays second fiddle to Hou, he risks alienating the voters who had been keen to support him because he represented a non-major party option — he was not aligned with the DPP, but he was not aligned with the KMT, either.
His party stands to gain more legislative seats, and therefore political influence, if he makes a moral stand as an independent candidate.
Moreover, he would have few guarantees that he would not be sidelined entirely as vice president, shown to be an ineffectual player and wounded for the next election.
Accepting second place on the ticket, Ko would be betting big, but if Hou is not at the top, the KMT would be betting the family heirlooms.
If Hou is the vice presidential candidate, the KMT would have become the third party, a corroboration of its terminal decline.
For the KMT, Ko taking the presidential ticket is a non-starter; it would almost certainly prefer to walk away from the alliance.
The lack of good faith is clear given the rush this has turned out to be. The idea of an anti-green alliance has been floated ever since the very early stages of the race showed Hou stumbling at the starting blocks and only recently, ploddingly, gain ground, not because of his own successes, but because of Ko’s errors and political clumsiness.
The idea of the alliance is not yet dead, but if the two parties do go ahead, it would be interesting to see what swing voters make of their transparent opportunism.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS