The disruptions in the Legislative Yuan have in part been because the “white” Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has been helping the “blue” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) stir up trouble. TPP Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) assures everyone that a bill proposed by the two parties is aimed at genuine reforms in the legislature. He says the party that has betrayed Taiwanese is the “green” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Anyone who says: “We have not changed — it is you who have changed” is likely a chameleon. Such people might have an enemy who always attacks them and a friend who has helped them, but when they have an argument with the friend, they embrace the enemy. People of this type might change their minds from one week to the next about who is their enemy and who is their friend, so anyone who associates with them will get hurt.
In January’s presidential and legislative elections, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) made some unwise moves that caused a drop in support for the party’s presidential candidate, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜).
Widespread rumors of an electoral alliance between the KMT and the TPP made Ko feel important, but when it came to the presidential election results, he garnered 7 percent fewer votes than Ho.
In the legislative elections, the TPP’s candidates failed, although it did cobble together eight at-large legislators. The result for the KMT — garnering one more legislative seat than the DPP — appeared to give the TPP’s eight lawmakers special leverage as a crucial minority, but in the six months since the vote, it is not so certain that they are crucial. The TPP can only play a crucial role if the KMT and the DPP are both trying to win its support, and the TPP waits to see which side offers the better deal, but if the two larger parties do not bid against each other, there can hardly be an auction.
That is indeed the situation.
TPP’S QUANDARY
The TPP’s quandary is that Ko, as its chairman, has no stage to play on, while TPP caucus convener Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), as the party whip, can tell its legislators how to vote. In other words, Huang has control over the party’s eight at-large legislative seats.
The nature of power is such that even if there is no conflict between Ko and Huang, there probably will be.
The TPP has an unspoken rule that its at-large legislators will be replaced in two years. Consequently, Huang only has that time as party whip, so his political ambitions face a race against time.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Lee Ming-hsien (李明賢) has said that Huang took advantage of a bathroom break to ask him: “Might the KMT be willing to give way?” — meaning give way to Huang to stand as a candidate for New Taipei City mayor.
Huang was a cofounder of the New Power Party (NPP), but he quit it in November last year to join the TPP. If the NPP was just a stepping stone for Huang, might he not be using the TPP in the same way?
Ko could hardly complain, because he turned his back on the DPP after it helped him get elected as mayor of Taipei.
POLITICAL DRAMA?
It would come as no surprise to see two ungrateful politicians turn on each other.
Even with secrets about Ko’s time as mayor emerging, conflict with Huang might generate even greater drama.
However, with the TPP being a minor party, a squabble between Ko and Huang would be no more than a storm in a teacup. They might self-destruct, but they will not have much effect on the broader political climate.
Ko was third in the presidential election, which makes his hoped-for road from Taipei City Hall to the Presidential Office look long indeed.
No TPP district legislative candidates won and its party apparatus is weak at the local level. Even the DPP cannot match the KMT at the local level, still less the inexperienced TPP.
Furthermore, with the pull of the KMT and the DPP, most TPP supporters are second or third-rate troops, and hitchhikers always hold their own interests in higher regard than those for their party.
The KMT’s and the DPP’s strategic responses to the TPP are less dependent on “market conditions” than they are on prospects. On Taiwan’s political stage, there have been plenty of parties such as the New Party, the Chinese Social Democratic Party, the People First Party (PFP), the Taiwan Solidarity Union and the NPP that have emerged with a bang, but fizzled out, and Ko, Huang and the TPP are political lightweights compared with Chinese Social Democratic Party founder Ju Gau-jeng (朱高正) or PFP founder James Soong (宋楚瑜).
Ju — a former lawmaker who died in 2021 aged 67 — earned the nickname “Rambo” for his combative personality in the legislature.
Soong has contested four elections as a presidential candidate, losing narrowly in two of them.
Furthermore the political territories of the KMT and the DPP are fairly stable, putting them in a highly advantageous position that leaves the TPP little chance of making a breakthrough. Ko and Huang do not seem to be on an upward trajectory, so the larger parties have no need to strategize in a manner that might bolster the TPP.
No matter which way the TPP’s legislators lean, they are minor players in the eyes of the KMT and the DPP. The KMT could easily trump the TPP, which has no choice but to depend on the KMT.
Even China would be uninterested. On issues such as the so-called “1992 consensus” and the idea that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to “one China” or are “one family,” Beijing would not bet on eight legislators out of 113.
It seems that the TPP is destined to be at most an “affiliate organization” of the KMT.
NO BUYER
As long as there is no attraction between the DPP and the TPP, there will only be one buyer for its eight legislators and the DPP is still smarting from Ko and Huang’s ingratitude and abandonment.
It is obvious that the DPP does not want to have anything to do with them.
However, a more long-term strategic plan for the DPP would be to hunt down the TPP, whose position on the political spectrum has shifted toward the “blue” KMT and the “red” Chinese Communist Party. The DPP could win over those among the “white” TPP supporters who dislike the “blue” and the “red.”
In the 2026 local elections and the 2028 presidential and legislative elections, the interests of the KMT and the DPP — which have share a common interest in shutting out the TPP — will be served by consolidating the structure of the contest between the two of them, which might lead to the “third force” TPP fading away.
Amendments to the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文) enacted in 2005 raised the constitutional threshold for parties to gain seats in the Legislative Yuan by introducing single-member constituencies, halving the number of legislative seats to 113 and only awarding at-large seats to parties that win at least 5 percent of the total vote. This makes it almost certain that the KMT and the DPP, which had an advantage even before the amendments, will be the two main parties in the legislature and that the president will be from one or the other.
DISTANT THIRD
Small parties might pop up here and there, but their best hope is to be a distant No. 3. In January’s legislative elections, the TPP was best placed among the smaller parties to occupy that position.
Despite the pain of being outnumbered in the legislature, the DPP is not afraid to push the TPP toward the KMT, with the long-term aim of disintegrating the TPP’s support base.
As for the KMT, it has made it clear that the TPP has no hope of being anything more than an “affiliate organization.”
Starting with Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the KMT, the two larger parties are campaigning to recall each other’s elected representatives.
A spokesperson for the campaign to recall Hsieh last month said that it had garnered 36,000 signatures, passing the threshold required to initiate a recall vote.
That the TPP is not part of those duels might seem like a feather in its cap, but it is also a warning sign that it will be marginalized in the 2026 and 2028 elections.
With the experience of this year’s legislative elections, the KMT and the DPP will be zeroing in on securing more than half of the legislative seats in 2028, even if their tactics are different.
What the two have in common is a desire to grab the TPP’s support base.
Ko’s and Huang’s “affiliation” with the KMT and their seeming pleasure in getting revenge on the DPP is actually a kind of self-harm.
SIDEKICKS
The KMT is happy for its eight TPP sidekicks to join it in an “axis of disruption” in the Legislative Yuan, thinking that this is its chance for a political comeback, but it is actually having the opposite effect. Opinion polling shows that the KMT and TPP are losing support, while support for the DPP has been climbing.
The KMT and the TPP claim to represent a combined 60 percent of public opinion, but more polls will put that claim to the test.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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