In my previous post, I described the KMT decision to veto Hsieh Wen-ding as prosecutor-general. An interesting aspect of this has been the interaction between KMT legislators and their leader: Ma Ying-jeou. It is quite clear that the KMT legislators defied their chairman’s wishes in the vote:

“The policy coordination department said that the caucus would hold an open vote on the nomination, but [the caucus] later opposed it. I am surprised [by the decision],” Ma said yesterday morning after presiding over a municipal meeting at Taipei City Hall.

Ma met with executive director of the department Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) on Sunday night to discuss the party’s stance and asked the party caucus to hold an open vote on the issue in an attempt to prevent any delay of the nomination. The party caucus, however, decided during the caucus meeting that it would cast blank votes for the nomination.

There are two possibilities here:

• Ma didn’t feel strongly enough to force the KMT party caucus to hold an open vote, or
• Ma has little control over his legislators

This isn’t the first time that Ma has been at odds with his legislators. When Ma was interviewed by the BBC in February, he said this about the special arms budget:

You have to understand that the original price tag was 18 billion US dollars, and when the news came out, most people, according to the opinion polls, were opposed to it. The defense ministry now reduced the price tag from 18 billion to now, roughly, 11. So that’s why our party has decided to come up with our own version of the policy at the end of this month. It’s going be reasonable and it will maintain Taiwan’s adequate defense capabilities.

Clearly, Ma planned to have a KMT proposal on the arms budget before he visited the US. However, that didn’t happen:

The opposition Kuomintang is seeking a consensus on its weapons procurement policy even though many of its legislators think the issue should be shelved due to a rise in cross-strait tensions after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) announced his decision to cease the application of national unification guidelines.

KMT Secretary-General Chan Chun-po (詹春柏) admitted that further communication is necessary before the KMT can come up with a policy on what weapons Taiwan should buy to defend itself.

Again, you can make arguments about whether this is because Ma just wanted to make the right noises (and didn’t care whether they were carried out) or because he hasn’t got control over his party.

A lack of control?

In both cases, I would argue that the main issue is that Ma just doesn’t have full control over KMT legislators. Although it’s a tried-and-trusted technique to say positive things in interviews and then conveniently forget about them, I don’t think that is happening here. Ma’s US trip was much more difficult for not having anything positive to say about arms sales – instead of having a proposal to wave, he was left defending the indefensible. Equally, he didn’t have to advise the KMT Caucus to have an open vote this week – he could simply have left the decision up to the caucus without any advice if he wanted to wash his hands of the whole affair.

So, we are left with the probability that the man who over 70% of KMT members support, who is in the middle of a honeymoon period as KMT Chairman doesn’t have the will or the power to control his party. There are several possible reasons for this. Since I think it’s a combination of all of them, I’ll just list them here in no particular order:

• He just isn’t a strong leader. It’s always been a criticism of Ma that he’s all style, and no substance – and he hasn’t (yet) done much to refute that as KMT Chairman.
• ‘The ghost of chairmen past’. Ex-KMT Chairman (serial loser, and king of all things negative and bitter) Lien Chan is still a very influental figure in the KMT. He is not a fan of Ma (he even flouted party rules to show that he voted for Wang in the KMT election), and has always been keen on the ‘block everything’ approach to opposition politics.
• The KMT legislators are the only ones with any real power in the KMT. Of course, that will change dramatically if (when) Ma wins the 2008 presidential election. Until then Ma has limited effective power over them. Most legislators were supporters of Wang Jin-pyng for KMT Chairman, and so have a fairly distant relationship with Ma.
• The PFP effect. Until the PFP is safely dead and buried, Ma has to tread very carefully in his relationship both with the PFP, and with the raft of legislators who recently returned from the PFP back into the KMT’s welcoming arms. The PFP (and ex-PFP) legislators are generally much more militant than the KMT, and Ma seems to be doing everything he can to keep them happy.
• General divisions within the KMT. As with just about any political party anywhere in the world, the KMT is far from being one big happy family. The most obvious issues is the continual frosty relationship between Ma and Wang Jin-pyng, but there are no doubt all sorts of other little power struggles going on under the surface.