Much attention has been paid to the impact the 921 earthquake had on national politics, especially on how it is affecting the fortunes of the presidential candidates. Less well known, but potentially even more significant in the long run, is the fact that the disaster is also shaking up politics at the local level, down to the borough and neighborhood (里、鄰), in the affected areas.
Taiwan's democratization, despite the gradualist approach of phasing in elections from the local level, has always been a top-down, center-directed process. In order to consolidate Taiwan's democracy and make it more robust, these trends need to be reversed.
Local politics in Taiwan is dominated by local factions, which maintain a large degree of independence from the political parties, bargaining for favors, which they then use to distribute to their clients, perpetuating the system. This is the ultimate source of the infamous black gold politics, as well as the primary reason why the political parties have thus far been unable to modernize their role.
Today, however, in communities throughout central Taiwan, struggles are breaking out surrounding local officials, the township and borough chiefs (鎮、里長); the latter previously were largely ceremonial positions, with no real administrative functions. But both types of leaders had great political significance, as the mechanism through which the faction system at the lowest level fed into the national political system. The most important role for the chiefs was as the local "pillars" (樁腳) for candidates for higher office, organizing and getting out the vote at election time. To do this, they rely on their personal networks, and some utilize less savory means, including vote-buying and even physical intimidation. For these reasons, at the 1996 National Development Conference (國發會), all parties agreed that these officials should become appointed civil servants. However, the National Assembly deputies, who were particularly dependent on the "pillars," shelved the proposal.
Now the earthquake has directly challenged this cozy arrangement. On the one hand, relief and reconstruction efforts have given them important new powers, and probably large amounts of aid funds at their disposal. By the same token, however, these benefits bring with them huge responsibilities, for which they were almost completely unprepared.
Residents, never before accustomed to relying on these officials, suddenly find that they must do so, and in many cases they are not satisfied. One way in which this popular disappointment, frustration and anger manifests itself is in the spontaneous formation of community self-help organizations (SHOs, 自救會), where people have gathered together to assert their rights and interests. Similar phenomena have occurred after large disasters elsewhere -- for example, in Japan after the 1995 Kobe quake. To this day, that region of Japan is noted for the strength of its community activism and mobilization.
Some of Taiwan's social activists, as soon as the earthquake struck last month, realized that such a movement could be as positive for Taiwan as it had been in Japan. One group in particular, the Humanistic Education Foundation (HEF, 人本教育基金會), decided that the best way to respond to the disaster was to go to the affected areas and try to encourage such a development.
HEF had started as a movement for students' rights, working on issues such as corporal punishment in schools. More recently, it initiated a program of "socialization" of education. In the process, it has developed the ability to mobilize large numbers of volunteers, mostly young people, but also concerned parents.
Starting the day after the earthquake, HEF recruited -- most often through a call posted on the HEF Web site -- and deployed six waves of these volunteers, over 200 each time, to Taichung County. The mission was not precisely defined.
As the group's charismatic founder Shi Ying (
The general principle, however, was clear: to somehow help quake victims to stand on their own feet. These activists felt that if real political power could be given to ordinary citizens, the stranglehold of the local factions could be weakened.
Taichung County was selected for a number of reasons.
First, County Commissioner Liao Yung-lai (廖永來) had developed a relationship with the group; he had even made a "contract" with HEF during his election campaign to invite it to participate in the process of educational reform in the county, including establishing the Public University (公民大學) in Tali (大里), Taichung County. (By unfortunate coincidence, the university opened its doors one day before the quake struck.)
Thus HEF not only had access to the government, but had a concentration of supporters in the county.
Second, it turned out that the pioneering work on community-organization in Taiwan had been done in Nantou County, the other seriously-devastated county, by Chen Chi-nan (陳其南), a professor at Chiao-tung University, and HEF didn't want to overlap or compete with that project.
The mission set up a temporary headquarters in a classroom in the county government building in Fengyuan (豐原) and divided the volunteers into two main teams -- one in Tali and one in Tungshih township (東勢), which bore the dubious distinction of being the area with the highest death toll. The Tungshih team was further divided into five squads -- one for each of four districts and one to man the "command center" -- each led by an HEF staffer or senior volunteer, or by experienced staff from other Taiwanese NGOs. The team operated out of tents at the River Park (河邊公園), where the Army and the county fire department had established a base camp and materiel storage center. They were joined in the park by some other volunteer organizations, including a Buddhist group that provided vegetarian meals for all the camp's residents.
In order to be able to have any influence with local citizens, HEF's first task was to establish its credibility. Its volunteers threw themselves into the rescue and freeing trapped people was the most important activity -- and the most attractive to volunteers. However, to differentiate itself from the many other groups who also were working hard to save lives, HEF changed the mission's name after the first wave, from "Rescue Mission" (救援團) to "Service Mission" (服務團). This change had the additional benefit of diluting the language of victimization, putting the affected people, at least rhetorically, above the HEF teams.
Shi echoed this theme, saying that simply talking and listening to the people was important.
"Many volunteers don't understand, they say `all we're doing is talking to them, and their house has fallen down.' But we're giving them a thought process, not just solving problems for them," Shi said.
In addition to joining the rescue efforts, HEF volunteers performed whatever tasks the local people laid at their doorstep, from cleaning portable toilets to contacting county government officials to arranging deliveries of supplies or equipment. In a short time, these efforts began to build a climate of trust among a segment of the community.
They also discovered that some members of the community had begun to spontaneously form their own organizations to cope with aspects of the crisis.
Kuo Jun-wu (郭駿武), Tungshih team leader, described how, in Hsiahsin Borough (下新里), the narrow alleys kept the water delivery trucks from entering. So residents organized teams to keep track of their schedule and bucket brigades to bring the water into the alleys.
In one of the largest shelters, at the Old Train Station (舊火車站), teenage boys formed an ad hoc security patrol. These expressions of community solidarity raised hopes that the goal of the mission was indeed feasible.
By the end of the third wave, on Oct. 2, HEF volunteers had made contact with about 10 such groups, in various stages of organization. Some of the groups were geographically organized, for residents of a particular borough or even neighborhood; some were centered on particular functions, for example meeting the special needs of renters. Of course, there were setbacks as well.
The first shelter-wide open meeting at the Old Train Station, which was to form an umbrella organization for all the members, broke down under geographic (the residents came from various boroughs) and ethnic cleavages, and ended in a fracas with a punch thrown.
A second meeting on the night of Oct. 2 resulted in the election of a steering committee, which immediately took delivery of a consignment of goods stored by the army platoon stationed at the site. However, it was not immediately clear whether a new, genuine consensus had formed, or whether the earlier objectors has simply stayed away.
In all his presentations about this project, Shi tried to keep expectations down, knowing that the probability of frustration at the pace of change was high.
Indeed, even after SHOs were established, they could prove ineffective or, worse, be taken advantage of by old-style politicians. Wu Li-Feng (吳麗芬), HEF executive director, mentioned a case elsewhere in Taichung County where this had already occurred -- an SHO had been co-opted by two politicians, who apparently saw in it a useful vote-generating vehicle.
In the face of these threats, Wu described HEF's mission as "keeping them healthy."
Wu said that provision of accurate information was the core function of the mission. The policies and regulations of central and county governments on such topics as subsidy applications changed on an almost daily basis during the first two weeks of the crisis, often before the original formulations had been distributed at the local level.
The failure of the traditional channels of the government hierarchy to provide crucial information in a timely fashion was further evidence that changes were needed. Teams in the field tried to keep up with the latest decision taken by the government by calling relevant offices each morning and then broadcasting updated information through fliers and sound trucks to residents during their daily rounds.
As an example of the importance of this role, Wu cited the confusion surrounding the housing inspections to be conducted to establish eligibility for the subsidy for those whose houses were "damaged" or "collapsed."
The Executive Yuan had originally stipulated that the inspections were to be carried out by qualified engineers. A few days later, this regulation had been changed to require additionally the borough chief's approval of the determination. Since the two levels of subsidy differed by NT$100,000, rumors were rife about who really had these powers; given the historical practices of local politicians, anxieties about how they would be used were not unreasonable. To counter the speculation, HEF acquired a copy of the original order from the Ministry of the Interior and distributed copies by hand, so that residents could read it for themselves.
During the Oct. 3-5 period, the situation in Tungshih came to a head. A further change in the regulations placed the power of determination of "damaged" or "collapsed" houses solely in the hands of the borough chiefs. In addition to their lack of real administrative experience, many of the borough chiefs themselves were digging themselves out of the quake. The Executive Yuan had also originally announced that the inspection and application process was to be completed by Oct. 5. However, the revised directive only reached the borough chiefs, through the township chief, on Oct. 2.
By Oct. 3, only a tiny minority of the buildings in Tungshih had been inspected. That evening, the HEF team and squad leaders decided to produce a special broadcast the next morning, informing the people of the deadline and the procedure.
The sound trucks went out on the morning of Oct. 4. By noon, several of the borough chiefs offices were swamped with crowds of people anxious to file their applications, in some cases, in the worst-hit boroughs, representing over half of the households. At one borough, the residents, who had been previously disappointed at their borough chief's performance, laid a virtual siege to the office, forcing the borough chief to escape out the back door. It was probably the first time that the people had directly confronted local authorities in this way. The borough chief then proceeded to the township chief to protest and at 1:30pm the latter arrived at the HEF command center to angrily demand that HEF cease its "troublesome" activities.
That evening, at the daily meeting between the township chief and all the borough chiefs, which was also held at the River Park base, the chief announced that the deadline would not be enforced, but that all applications would be entertained and inspection would continue until it was completed.
Present at the edges of the meeting -- which, being held in an open tent, could hardly be kept out -- in addition to HEF staff, were representatives from several of the SHOs. Again, this may have been the first time that local citizens had personally monitored such a meeting.
Afterwards, six of the borough chiefs, mostly from densely populated areas in the town center, requested HEF assistance to process the huge number of applications. The next day, HEF sent two volunteers to each of these six offices, where they helped by recording basic data and assigning numbers to the waiting applicants.
According to one squad leader, women's rights activist Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青), some of the borough chiefs even tried to convince HEF to let their volunteers conduct the inspections, even affixing the official seal to the documents. But, as Hsu said, "We had to refuse this, because it was just a way for them to try to pass responsibility to us if anything went wrong."
The borough chiefs were, in effect, admitting that they were unable to handle the enormous new responsibilities the 921 quake had thrust upon them and that the best way to proceed was to open the process up to the people.
HEF began with a mandate to foster a sense of empowerment among local people, to encourage them to take responsibility for the development of their communities, instead of passively waiting for governments to solve their problems.
While it is still too early to tell whether the new thought process that Shi described has indeed taken hold among the citizens of Tungshih, the Oct. 4 incident demonstrated on a larger scale the potential power of the citizenry, given organization and information, to effect meaningful change at the local level. Local politics in Taiwan may never be the same.
Bo Tedards is a visiting research fellow at the Institute for National Policy Research.
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