“And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
-Lord Acton
It may merely be a case of KMT bosses hyping their electoral chances, but there’s been some talk lately that Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party might pick up a two-thirds majority in the upcoming legislative elections. From today’s Taiwan News:
[Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian] related that some rumors had claimed that the DPP would only win between 29 and 38 seats and observed that KMT leaders were "brimming with confidence" and expected to win a two-thirds majority, or at least 76 of the 113 seats in the new Legislative Yuan.
Chen elaborated a little on the consequences for Taiwan of the KMT winning so decisively:
…the DPP chairman warned that the "worst case" of the regaining by the KMT of absolute control over the Legislature "would not only be a grave setback for the DPP but will be a total defeat for Taiwan, democracy and justice."
The president said that the capture of a two-thirds Legislative majority by the KMT would cause Taiwan’s national status to retreat from the DPP’s position that "Taiwan and China constitute two countries, one on each side of the Taiwan Strait" to the KMT era of "one China and ultimate unification" as maintained by the KMT’s "National Unification Guidelines."
"Taiwan’s national survival and direction of development will face a 180-degree turn" and "’unification’ will no longer be impossible or a ridiculous ideological advocation but will become the accelerated policy goal of the Chinese Nationalist Party government," predicted Chen.
It’s a little surprising that Chen didn’t mention some of the more immediate effects of a two-thirds win by the KMT. Dr. Joe Hung of Taiwan’s China Post has been good enough to reveal some of what could lie in store:
Should the KMT win a two-thirds majority or more, President Chen Shui-bian…might be recalled before he steps down on May 20.
Poor, naive soul I am. Here I was, thinking the KMT had given up trying to recall Chen. After all, the guy only has a few more months left in office. But why let good old-fashioned practicality get in the way of political vendetta?
Now, it must be admitted that Chen leaving office a month or two early isn’t likely to make much difference in the grand scheme of things. But what Hung fails to do is take the implications of this legislative power a step further: if the KMT can so easily dispose of President Chen with their hypothetical two-thirds majority, then they can just as easily do away with some OTHER successor president who has the misfortune of belonging to the "wrong" political party.
In other words, should the Taiwanese elect a legislature on January 12th composed of a KMT supermajority, they will have instantly rendered their March 20th presidential election an exercise in futility. Vote for a KMT president, get a KMT president. Vote for a DPP president – and you AGAIN get a KMT president. Because the KMT both can and WILL recall that DPP president (and his vice-president) within a very short time after being elected. Leaving the legislative speaker – a KMT man, of course – to assume the post of president.
(This might sound a bit crazy and conspiratorial to anyone unfamiliar with Taiwanese politics. To those I would say, ’twasn’t me who wanted Chen recalled for abolishing a defunct unification committee that hadn’t met in seven years. No, KMT members were the ones busy setting the bar that low. Past being prologue, we can assume future KMT recall efforts will also be based on similarly flimsy grounds.)
Taiwanese polls are notoriously unreliable, and we’ll know in a few days just how well the Chinese Nationalist Party fares. But give the KMT the power of automatic presidential recall via a two-thirds majority? I wouldn’t even trust MYSELF to wield that kind of power responsibly over my political opponents – much less a party that had recently presided over 40 years of martial law.