Slide Deepens for Taiwan’s Nationalists

The astonishing fall from grace of Taiwan’s Nationalist Party, which began with its ouster from the presidency last year, grew steeper and more devastating Saturday with the loss of its parliamentary majority at the polls.

Results from island-wide elections showed the once-invincible Nationalists losing 42 seats and holding on to just 68 in the 225-member legislature--far from enough to preserve the dominant position the party has enjoyed for decades.

The outcome was not even enough for the party to maintain a plurality in the parliament. To their embarrassment, the Nationalists--also known as the Kuomintang, or KMT--finished second to their archrival, the Democratic Progressive Party of President Chen Shui-bian. It managed to score impressive gains in spite of an economy mired in recession, an inexperienced government and a tense relationship with Beijing.

“The KMT just really bombed,” said Shelley Rigger, an expert on Taiwanese politics at Davidson College in North Carolina. By contrast, she said, the Democratic Progressive Party, which ran a tightly focused campaign, “really finished at the top of its estimates and everybody’s estimates for it,” with 87 seats, up nearly a third.

But with no party commanding an outright majority, analysts expect a round of intense horse-trading and negotiating to commence that could spawn the first coalition government in Taiwan’s history and a redrawing of the island’s political map in ways that would scarcely have seemed believable just two years ago.

Then, the Nationalists were still in charge of the presidency and the parliament, roosts they had ruled since Chiang Kai-shek fled here from the Communists on the Chinese mainland in 1949.

Chen’s inauguration in May 2000 broke the party’s monopoly on power after a humiliating contest in which the KMT’s candidate ended in third place. In Saturday’s balloting, the party lost undisputed control of its last bastion, which it had used to thwart Chen’s initiatives after having been kicked out of the president’s office.

The 50-year-old Chen now has a chance to try to stitch together a coalition with some of Taiwan’s smaller parties--a tough challenge in the fractious and fractured political environment here. During the campaign, his calls for a broad postelection national alliance, including the KMT, met with indifference.

“The end of this election marks the beginning of an era of cooperation,” Chen said Saturday night.

Similarly, the Nationalists may try to retain the upper hand in parliament by forging a deal with one of two parties made up mostly of Nationalist defectors. But that effort would probably be hampered by the factionalism, jealousies and rivalries that drove the disaffected from the party in the first place.

Instead, experts say, the political gridlock that many Taiwanese voters hoped would go away is likely to persist, at least in the short term.

“We’re used to that,” said Philip Yang, a professor of political science at National Taiwan University in Taipei, the capital. “We don’t like it, but we’re used to it.”

What no one is used to among the long-ruling Nationalists is such precipitous decline, grave enough that some analysts question the party’s ability to survive. Some predict a wave of politicians bolting from the party in coming weeks.

However, with a war chest reputed to be worth more than $2 billion and modest gains in local elections that also were held Saturday, the KMT is not likely to vanish from the scene quickly.

“I doubt that it will disappear altogether,” Rigger said. “Who will close out their checking accounts?”

Clearly, though, the KMT will need to do some soul-searching and shape-shifting to win back voters who abandoned it to support either the Democratic Progressive Party or the People First Party, a year-old splinter KMT group that won a surprising 46 seats in the legislature.

Many Taiwanese have become disillusioned with the KMT, seeing it as a calcified, corrupt organization out of step with modern Taiwan, one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies.

“The KMT is conservative and sticks to old ways,” said Cheng Shien-che, 49, who made his way to a local school on a warm, sunny morning to cast a vote for the New Party, another KMT breakaway group. “We need fresh ideas.”

Creative ideas are desperately needed to revive Taiwan’s flagging economy, the issue that dominated the campaign. Unemployment, at 5.3%, is the highest in decades. The stock market has dropped like a stone. Taiwan’s vaunted high-tech companies, among the main engines of its previously propulsive economy, have hit the skids.

As a campaign issue, the island’s ailing fortunes overshadowed the perennial question of Taiwan’s relations with mainland China, whose Communist regime claims the island as part of its rightful territory.

Last year, Beijing loudly rattled its sabers before the presidential vote, warning Taiwanese voters that they would live to regret their decision if they elected Chen, whose party supports Taiwan’s independence.

This time, Beijing remained quiet, although it is likely to view Saturday’s results with concern, because many mainland analysts had expected the KMT to at least remain the largest party in parliament.

As president, Chen has so far trod a careful line on China, refusing to embrace Beijing’s cherished “one China” principle but still opening investment channels across the Taiwan Strait. Beijing has opted to ignore Chen and court politicians from the KMT--which supports reunification between the two sides--and to sink the mainland’s economic hooks ever deeper into the island. Taiwanese businesses have already invested about $60 billion in China.

“The current election of Taiwan is just a local legislative election. Beijing will not interfere in it,” said Fan Xizhou, director of the Taiwan Research Institute of Xiamen University, which lies directly across the Taiwan Strait on the mainland.

“We advocate separating politics from the economy. We can continue to develop economic exchanges across the strait and ultimately influence political relations with good economic relations,” Fan said.

Still, the KMT’s dismal performance and the Democratic Progressives’ gains represent a setback for Beijing’s hopes.

So does the surprising performance of the new Taiwan Solidarity Union, which won 13 seats in the legislature and which is the Democratic Progressives’ best hope for cooperation.

The Union’s biggest advocate is Lee Teng-hui, the former president of Taiwan who was booted from the KMT this year for stumping for the Union and throwing his support toward greater Taiwanese autonomy, if not outright independence from China.

Although he irritates many on the island, Lee is also esteemed by a significant subset that credits him with facing up to the big bully across the strait.

“I wanted to find someone who would stand up for Taiwan, who would put Taiwan first,” said Kevin Chen, 38, who voted for the Taiwan Solidarity Union. “Lee Teng-hui has been very concerned about Taiwan’s politics and its democratization.”

None of Lee’s charisma, and little, it appears, of his devoted following, has attached to his former vice president, Lien Chan, who remains chairman of the Nationalist Party.

It was Lien, a sour politician at best, who came in third last year in the presidential election, and Lien who subsequently pushed the KMT to the right once Lee stepped down as party chairman. That strategy banked on winning back KMT voters who had grown disgusted with Lee’s policy toward China and had flocked to the KMT splinter parties. It did not appear to work.

The chances of a KMT comeback could rest on whether Lien clings to his post or makes way for younger, more dynamic party stars such as Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, a Harvard-educated lawyer who regularly is voted Taiwan’s sexiest politician.

Lien “has not been able to energize the party,” Rigger said. “And if they don’t get some new leadership, it is kind of hard to imagine where they can go.”