Taiwan’s legislative election held in January 2008 radically changed the makeup of the country’s law-making body. Of the 113 legislative seats, the then ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won only 27, while the Kuomintang (KMT) grabbed 81. The new legislature was restructured as the result of an electoral system that now elects one legislator in each constituency. In 2008, the system saw the KMT and its allies gain an overwhelming three-fourths majority in the Legislative Yuan. The previous system allowed multiple representatives in each district. The result of the 2008 poll was a dramatic leap from the roughly one-third of the legislative seats that the KMT took during the previous legislative election in 2004, a poll that ended with no party securing an outright majority despite more than half the number of seats going to the “pan-blue” coalition, which is composed mainly of the KMT, People First Party (PFP) and New Party. They were opposed by the “pan-green” camp made up chiefly of the DPP and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU). In contrast, the DPP’s plunge from around 40 percent of legislative seats before to less than 25 percent after the 2008 Legislative Yuan election marked the party’s greatest setback since its formation in 1986. Two months later, the DPP also lost the presidential election to incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who led the KMT back to power, a position it had held in Taiwan for more than a half-century before eight years of DPP rule from 2000 to 2008. Many observers believe the KMT’s presidential victory, by 58.42 percent of a total 13.1 million votes, was given momentum by the party’s landslide win in the legislature.

Currently, the KMT holds 72 seats to the DPP’s 32, a tally that follows by-elections or vacancies in a number of seats including those resigned by legislators or that saw election results challenged in the courts. Other seats are held by three legislators from the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union, formed in 2004, and two independents. The margin between the major political parties could change after this month’s election as candidates become more accustomed to the new electoral system, according to Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華), a professor in the Department of Sociology at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Ku is also a standing board member of the Citizen Congress Watch, a watchdog alliance of 40 nongovernmental groups established in 2007 to monitor the Legislative Yuan and evaluate legislators.

A KMT candidate campaigns for the upcoming legislative election in southern Taiwan’s Tainan City. (Photo by Central News Agency)

While the ruling KMT seeks to maintain its control of the legislature, the DPP has high hopes of at least improving its current status from that of a minor party in the law-making body. Meanwhile, smaller parties or independent candidates are trying to find ways to gain a reasonable level of representation given the usual two-party competition in most districts, a situation widely considered to be quite unfavorable to those who are not backed by one of the major political parties.

The new electoral system, which was put into practice after constitutional amendments in 2005, adopted not only single representation for each constituency, but also virtually halved the number of lawmakers from 225 to 113. The reconfigured legislature has 73 district seats and six seats for indigenous peoples, all of which are selected by direct ballots for individual candidates, as well as 34 national at-large seats allocated along party lines according to the proportion of ballots each party receives.

Ku says that the new system came as a rude awakening for political parties and their candidates. “Many of them still thought and ran as they did under the former multi-member district system, in which it was relatively hard to foresee who would be elected,” Ku says. “In the new system, however, only the candidate with the most votes can win, so it’s crucial for [members of the same coalition] to support one candidate.” In this respect, the blue camp evidently outshone the green during the 2008 legislative election, which saw just one PFP candidate run against a KMT candidate among the pan-blues—in the safe seat of outlying Lienchiang County, which typically produces an easy victory for blue candidates—in contrast to 13 TSU hopefuls competing alongside DPP representatives in 73 constituencies nationwide. In southern Taiwan’s Chiayi City, for example, while the two pan-green candidates from the DPP and TSU collected a combined total of 52.7 percent of the vote, it was the KMT nominee who won the legislative seat. This time, however, the situation seems to be reversed to some extent as the TSU has no candidates standing in any constituency, whereas the PFP has nominated at least 10 district and indigenous candidates, who will compete against KMT nominees. “There’re various forms of cooperation and competition among different political forces in different elections,” Ku says. “The current legislature dominated by one single party is quite unusual and other parties are likely to emerge with considerable strength in the coming election.”

DPP legislative candidate Lin Lou-tsui at a campaign rally for the upcoming election (Photo Courtesy of Lin Lou-tsui)

Lin Lou-tsui (林濁水), a former legislator and a DPP hopeful for the legislative seat of New Taipei City’s Xinzhuang District, expects his party to take six of the total 12 seats in New Taipei City as well as three of eight seats in Taipei City, which would mean a considerable rise from the party’s present two and zero seats respectively in Taiwan’s two most populous cities. The former executive director of the DPP Policy Research Committee bases his estimate on the results of the 2010 year-end election for mayors of five special municipalities, namely Taipei, New Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung cities, which together account for well over half of Taiwan’s population. Although KMT candidates won in Taipei, New Taipei and Taichung, a large margin of victory in Tainan helped the DPP garner more votes than any other party—nearly half the total number of votes cast—if the five cities were taken as a whole.

“In elections for a single district representative, his or her political party’s performance plays a crucial role,” Lin says. In contrast, Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾), an incumbent KMT legislator-at-large who will run for a legislative seat in Taipei City that covers Zhongshan District plus part of Songshan District, believes that the desirability of individual candidates is a more important factor than a party’s general appeal. “Voters are more swayed by a candidate’s personality and performance record,” says Lo, who does not expect much change in the blue-green divide in the legislature in this year’s polls. A professional accountant, she says that the Legislative Yuan needs expertise like hers to do a satisfactory job of examining the government’s budget and making laws that respond to people’s needs.

For Pan Han-shen (潘翰昇), spokesman of the Green Party Taiwan, what the Legislative Yuan needs is not more members from the major parties but representatives who offer a true choice for voters. Pan will run for the legislative seat in Taipei that covers Xinyi District plus part of Songshan District. “In Taiwan, many of those who try to create a distinct image for themselves to attract non-aligned or swing voters have actually split from one of the two major camps,” Pan says. “Despite their campaign strategies and political gestures as ‘a third force,’ most people know their real position,” he says.

Green Party Taiwan’s spokesman Pan Han-shen will try to win a seat in the national legislature. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Alternative Voices

The Green Party Taiwan was established in 1996 and was a founding member of the Global Greens and Asia Pacific Greens Network, formed in 2001 and 2005 respectively. Pan and other Green Party members have taken part in a number of elections with the aim of offering an alternative political voice in a country long divided between the KMT and DPP. In the 2010 year-end election for city council members in Taiwan’s five special municipalities, while the Green Party collected only 0.33 percent of ballots cast in the poll, several of its candidates recorded a considerable rise in support for individual seats. One candidate managed to attract 9.56 percent of the vote in New Taipei City’s Danshui District, while in Taipei City, Pan’s 2.15 percent of the vote in the city’s Third Constituency also marked a big increase from the 0.93 percent that he received in the 2006 year-end election. During this year’s legislative election, Pan expects much wider support with the absence of a DPP candidate, as a DPP competitor gained about 32 percent of the ballots last time in Pan’s constituency. “While we have a greater affinity with the DPP on environmental issues, we’ve also found much consensus with many KMT supporters in such fields as animal protection,” Pan says. “We’ll try to attract voters through parts of our party platform including social justice, sustainability and a non-nuclear energy policy.” With competition from only one major rival, Pan says that his party has its best opportunity ever to win a seat in the national legislature.

The expected higher voter turnout due to the first-ever combined elections for the legislature and presidency is also considered favorable for candidates who are not members of the major political parties, as they could attract the support of those who might not bother to vote in a legislative election otherwise. In 2008, while 58.5 percent of eligible voters went to the polls for the legislative election, two months later the turnout grew to 76.3 percent with more than 3 million additional votes cast in the presidential election.

Combining the presidential and legislative elections is also a way to reduce voter fatigue and the risk of conflict among supporters of opposing parties, according to Lo Shu-lei. “Too frequent elections could lead to great tension among social and ethnic groups,” she say. Ku Chung-hwa also supports the move toward fewer elections. “Now that the legislative and presidential terms are both four years, it’s reasonable for both elections to be held at the same time in order to save effort and resources,” Ku says. “Although there might be some political considerations in such an arrangement, there’s still something [of merit in the new system].”

A sign on a bus in Taipei City advertises a PFP legislative candidate for this month’s poll. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

The inevitably higher profile of presidential candidates also causes concern, however, that the legislative election could be significantly overshadowed. Lin says that during campaigning for both the legislature and presidency, most legislative candidates take on more of a “supplementary” role by promoting regional support for the presidential hopeful they side with. “If democracy is defined by a balance of power between administration and legislation, then it’s not right for the legislative election to be ‘muted’ for the sake of the presidential campaign,” he says. “Presidential and legislative candidates can help promote each other, but the would-be legislators must have their own views and ideas.”

Running for Reform

Reform of the Legislative Yuan is one of Lin’s major campaign issues. For example, he says while members elected in Taiwan and its offshore territories have gradually replaced those who came with the KMT government in the late 1940s, few changes have been made to the structure of the law-making institution. Among other things, legislators tend to join different committees every year so they rarely develop expertise in a specific area, a phenomenon that weakens professional supervision by the legislature, Lin says. For his part, Ku points out that resolutions made in a committee are often greatly altered through closed-door negotiations among party caucuses in the legislature. “We should move toward a legislative system centered on the open, transparent working of committees like many other countries,” Ku says. His group Citizen Congress Watch has been calling for the establishment of a parliamentary channel on television to broadcast the whole process of examining major laws and invite discussions on them.

Ku also points to electoral problems that need further attention, notably unequal representation. As at least one legislator is elected in each county, the islet county of Lienchiang with only around 10,000 residents, for example, has one representative and some other counties with a population many times that number of residents have just one, too.

A DPP legislative candidate, fourth left, is seen with city councilors from his party in a sign in New Taipei City ahead of this month’s election. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

The Green Party Taiwan’s Pan calls for greater room for development of smaller parties. Among other things, the threshold for parties to receive government subsidies should be lowered in order to help small parties develop an adequate presence in the political arena. Since Taiwan began to establish a true democracy more than two decades ago, effective competition among political parties has been a major yardstick for the country’s political development. As a new party representation will soon emerge in the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan will continue to carry out and perfect its electoral and legislative systems to make a better democratic future for its people.

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com