Although it’s being overshadowed by talk about China’s anti-secession law recently, the biggest event in Taiwanese politics over the next couple of months will be the selection of the next chairman of the KMT. At face value, this is a fairly simple 2-way race between Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平). However, politics in Taiwan is never that simple.

The first problem has been the behaviour of the current Chairman, Lien Chan; although he has been dropping strong hints for several months now that he won’t stand for another term, he still hasn’t made his official decision. This has meant that although Ma announced his candidacy on the 14th February, Wang delayed until March 17th before throwing his hat into the ring. This has led to an unedifying month of Wang pleading with Lien to stand again (purely to curry favour – he clearly doesn’t want him to), while Ma has been forced to issue denials that he is being ‘disloyal’ to Lien for announcing his candidacy too soon (despite waiting until Lien called for candidates to step forward).

The next problem has been the date of the election. Originally slated for May 28th, the date was suddenly changed to July 16th, ostensibly to avoid a clash with elections for the National Assembly. However, this change happened well after Ma had announced his candidacy, but a day before Wang announced his – and it’s not as if the date of National Assembly elections would have been a surprise to anyone.

However, the biggest argument (which still hasn’t been resolved) has been over who would be allowed to vote for the chairman. In principal, of course, all KMT members can vote – but something like 2/3rds of the KMT’s 1 million members are not up to date on their membership fees – which would mean they’re not eligible to vote. From the China Post:

Wang Jin-pyng, president of the Legislative Yuan, wants that vote to enable all card-carrying members to elect their new leader.

Mayor of Taipei Ma Ying-jeou insists that only those members who have paid their dues in full be allowed to vote on July 16.

The Chinese-born mayor is favored to win the July 16 election, if the party central sides with him. Only 37 percent of the 1.09 million Kuomintang members have a clean dues record. A majority of them are retired veterans and public functionaries, who support Ma.

Islander members, who form the majority of those with dues in arrears, are likely to vote for the native-born speaker of the legislature.

A large proportion of the ‘paid-up’ members of the KMT are actually members who are over 65 – who don’t have to pay a membership fee at all. This means that there is a danger that the vote will be nowhere near representative of the KMT’s actual membership:

“The party needs reform,” Wang urged. “If only 200,000 to 300,000 members go to the polls,” he warned, “a chairman thus elected will head a party of old men.

“It’s tantamount to old men voting in a chairman.

“Can we talk about reform, if we can’t reform the rules to prevent it?

Clearly, Wang is right: a party which can’t even organise an internal vote to choose its new leader is in dire need of reform. However, altering (or interpreting) the rules of the contest to favour one candidate before an election is hardly most people’s idea of reform.

This whole developing fiasco shows that the KMT still has trouble with the whole concept of elections. Previous chairmen have all been decided upon in back-room deals by the party hierarchy, making this the first real open contest.

Ironically, the party which is loudest in touting its democratic credentials, the DPP, had no trouble electing its new chairman back in January: learning from how the KMT used to do it, they ensured there was only 1 candidate standing.