In a previous post, I described the issues behind this week’s National Assembly Elections. What about the actual election, and the positions of the main parties?

The TSU and PFP do an about face

Back in August last year, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and the People First Party (PFP) both supported the constitutional change that is behind these elections. One of the main reasons for their support was that they didn’t want to be seen as the parties that were ‘obstructing progress’ before the legislative elections. Now that those elections have been and gone (with disastrous results for both parties), they no longer seem to care about public opinion. For them, it is now about voting to save their jobs. If the size of the legislature is halved (as is proposed), then half of these politicians will be out of a job in 3 years time – and with the reform making it harder for the smaller parties to compete, a large number of TSU & PFP legislators fear for their own future.

Neither of these parties have done much campaigning; their position is so hard to support that they are hoping people will just vote along party lines without knowing what the real issues are.

The DPP & KMT: A new unholy alliance

On the other side of the fence, the DPP and the KMT are both supporting the changes. This has lead to the slightly bizarre sight of DPP adverts which slag off the TSU (the traditional ideological partner of the DPP) and the PFP (who the DPP are still trying to forge an alliance with), while trying to say as little as possible about the KMT (their traditional enemy). The image on the left is a snapshot of one of their adverts – with the yellow (TSU) and orange (PFP) candidates changing their ‘yes’ to a ‘no’, while the green (DPP) candidate confirms his ‘yes’ vote.

In contrast, the KMT have been running adverts to build on the success of their recent trip to China (the KMT is working with China to ensure peace, while the DPP don’t even know how to spell the word). The fact that this has nothing to do with the issues at stake in this election is, it seems, beside the point.

Will anyone bother to vote?

Despite efforts to appeal to the gambling instincts of the Taiwanese, the turnout for this election is guaranteed to be tiny. The Central Election Committee is hoping for a turnout of about 40%; personally I’ll be surprised if it’s much above 20%. There’s been very little campaining, most of the campaining has ignored the issues, very few people even know there’s an election coming (much less know what it’s about), and after 2 important, high-profile and acrimonious elections last year, people are a bit apathetic about yet another election.

Confusion over the process

One final reason for the predicted low turnout is confusion about what people are voting for; people are being asked to vote for a party that they voted for 3 months ago – over an issue which every party agreed upon 6 months ago. To add to the confusion, it is still unclear how the elected National Assembly would then vote on the constitutional change. The legislature has to pass a law to define how that is done (is a straight 50% majority enough to pass the change? Or 75% super-majority? Still undecided) – and they have not yet done so. It is conceivable we won’t know this until after the election, or even that it will never get decided – in which case the National Assembly will literally do nothing.

The bottom line

Six months ago, we saw a rare agreement between Taiwanese politicians to improve the democratic process. That legislators were (in a large part) willing to vote themselves out of a job for the betterment ot Taiwan was quite a surprise. Unfortunately, since then normal service (i.e. petty bickering between the parties) has resumed and is threatening to undermine this progress.

The current process for constitutional reform is a mess – which is in danger of turning into a full blown farce. It’s a catch-22 position: the current process for constitutional reform is a mess, which just emphasises the need for constitutional reform! I can only hope that the KMT & DPP between them get enough votes to push through this reform.