Suggestions for the New Administration from the Other Half of Taiwan

Jou Yi-cheng: Three Undertakings for a New Social Unity

President Ma was elected with a huge mandate of almost 7.66 million votes, or 58.45% of the poll. But the other 42% of those who turned out to vote-5.44 million people-cannot be ignored, so Taiwan Panorama presents this special series of interviews with outgoing vice president Annette Lu of the Democratic Progressive Party, Jou Yi-cheng, chairperson of the Third Society Party, and Chien Hsi-chieh of the Pan-Purple Coalition, to give them a chance to air any misgivings about the incoming administration and give their recommendations.

I think after President Ma takes office the biggest challenge will still be cross-strait relations. A social consensus is necessary if he wants to enter into cross-strait negotiations, and to achieve any consensus, he'll have to push ahead quickly with three big undertakings.

First, Ma needs to establish a social safety net. The biggest risk in easing cross-strait relations is not the sovereignty dispute or national security. It's social security and wealth disparity-issues that directly impact ordinary people. We can't take a short-term perspective on these questions.

Easing restrictions on cross-strait business and trade is one link in the process of globalization, which is causing major shrinkage of the middle class. For the near term, the business community, and especially the travel industry, won't be overly worried about this problem because they have huge hopes that closer cross-strait ties will bring prosperity. But a year or two from now the disparities will set in, with the rich getting richer while no one else benefits at all. It will lead to social acrimony and tensions. So Ma needs to be prepared and move quickly to build up a social safety net.

Second, Ma needs to set quickly about the task of building a new view of the nation, because the other half of Taiwan is concerned that he perhaps represents the old KMT, maybe even the pre-Lee Teng-hui KMT.

Of course, Ma has put forth considerable effort on this score already to show that he identifies with Taiwan, but he still has to move beyond the shibboleths of both the old KMT and the DPP-"Greater China" in the former case, "Taiwan independence" in the latter-and establish a new national identity and a new way of discussing it. Exactly what sort of nation is Taiwan? What is the status of "the Republic of China on Taiwan?" These questions cannot be sidestepped just by "putting disputes aside," as when dealing with the PRC regime.

For example, the DPP feels that the KMT has always been an alien regime, while the KMT insists that its power has always been legitimate because delegates from Taiwan were present at the constitutional congress of 1946 in Nanjing, and at the Cairo Declaration. But Chiang Kai-shek only came to Taiwan to exercise occupation as the representative of the Allied Powers. He did not thereafter allow Taiwan to exercise self-determination. It remained an occupation, and therefore the talk about KMT rule having always been legitimate is just the KMT-centric viewpoint, not the Taiwan-centric viewpoint.

On this question, I would suggest that Ma adopt the concept espoused by Lee Teng-hui, which is that the KMT was once an alien regime but democratic elections over the years later gave it a strong basis of legitimacy in public opinion and turned it into a locally based organization, so that it is no longer an alien regime.

Even so, I still feel that the green camp (which I call "the first society") and the blue camp ("the second society") are very different, and Ma Ying-jeou clearly doesn't understand the other half of Taiwan. Despite his travels as a presidential candidate, when he did "long stays" at the homes of ordinary people in central and southern Taiwan, the fact remains that those stays were basically all at the homes of people who are friendly to the KMT. He doesn't actually understand the half of Taiwan that puts top priority on Taiwan-centric values and a Taiwan-centric regime, the half whose support was not shaken by revelations of DPP corruption, or people like former national policy advisor Alice King, who declared that "anyone who votes for Ma Ying-jeou is not Taiwanese!"

So I think the new administration needs to act quickly to establish a new identity, to find a new way of interpreting everything, an interpretation that is acceptable to anyone at all, whether Hoklo or mainlander, so that everyone feels they can move forward with their lives without fear of discrimination or oppression.

On this score, I like the appointment of Cheng Jei-cheng as the new minister of education, because he has always been in the Taiwan-centric camp, and is a liberal. When we were still under an authoritarian government, he supported democratization, so he can put the other half of Taiwan at ease and convince us that at least our education will continue to have local roots and the Taiwan-centric viewpoint will continue to have currency, and we won't go back to the old Greater China thing.

But precisely because the China factor is so potent, and because the KMT and the DPP each insists on certain aspects of its own intepretation of history, rational discourse on many public policy issues will not be possible without a new, inclusive national identity. In particular, as I just mentioned, the wealth disparity brought on by a decision to ease cross-strait relations will gradually start becoming obvious a year or two down the line, at which point we'll have a much more nettlesome problem on our hands. People are not easily galvanized by economic injustice alone, but if, to the feeling of economic exploitation, you add nationalist sentiment toward the exploiters, well, nationalism is the most powerful force in the history of humanity. The idea of "an alien regime joining forces with China to prey on us Taiwanese" would really stir up social acrimony, and I don't think Ma Ying-jeou's decisive election victory has mitigated this. On the contrary, things could get one heck of a lot worse. Considerable caution is needed.

The third undertaking is to amend the constitution. The many elections we've held since the 1990s give legitimacy to our current constitution, but most importantly, it is functionally lacking. We feel that the parliamentary cabinet system, with its emphasis on consensus building, is more stable than the presidential system. Otherwise, the whole world will be guessing every four years, as the presidency comes up for election, who is going to be president and what Taiwan is going to be like. There is actually only one successful example of a presidential system in the world, and that is the United States.

Of course, direct presidential elections have become a symbol of Taiwan's democratization, and can't be done away with, but by amending the constitution we would be able to clearly define the powers of the president and premier. The president's biggest power right now is the right to appoint the premier without requiring the approval of the Legislative Yuan. The sole source of the premier's power is the president, so the premier has to pretty much take orders. That is why a single phone call from a confidant of the former president, or from his son-in-law, is all it took to get cabinet members to toe the line. The system is almost totally lacking in rules.

There's no clear mechanism for the exercise of presidential power. The only function of the staff at the Office of the President is to support the president in his ceremonial duties. The president doesn't review official documents from government agencies, he's not well-informed, he doesn't understand the civil service system-we have a good civil service system-doesn't understand its concerns, why they make this or that decision. His information comes via private channels-his confidants, friends from outside the government, corporate financial backers, and the like. This is dangerous.

In short, to maintain a long-lasting and stable rule, and for the sake of his own historical legacy, I hope President Ma will move ahead on these three big undertakings. If he does well with them, he can build a new social unity and make the other half of Taiwan that didn't vote for him hope for a day when Taiwan no longer has this half or that half. Doing away with acrimony would be his biggest achievement.