Once tradition bound, this year’s KMT primary is a blockbuster tale of drama and political intrigue.
The News Lens
Date: 2019/05/03
By: Courtney Donovan Smith (1石東文)
Credit: Reuters / TPG
Television news in Taiwan is awash in breathless reports of drama, surprise, intrigue and enough twists and turns involving a cast of colorful character that makes TV political dramas seem tame. And this is just the Kuomintang (KMT) presidential primary – the actual presidential race has yet to begin.
Traditionally, KMT primaries were largely a forgone conclusion. The real action was the race to become party chair, who it was then assumed would be the de facto candidate for the party. This model was disrupted for a few months in 2015 when then-party chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) declined to run in the primary, eventually handing the nomination to Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), a firebrand deemed too pro-China for the public to handle at the time. The party eventually pulled the rug out from under their increasingly unpopular nominee and shoved a very reluctant Chu into the candidacy, restoring the tradition of the chair and the candidate being one in the same. Chu – a somewhat ungainly, but disarmingly charming man and very popular New Taipei City mayor who married into a powerful family – was very smart to be reluctant. The tide was very strongly against the KMT, and both his campaign and the party were crushed in a landslide.
In 2017, the demoralized KMT held a contest for party chair to determine who would lead the party into the November 2018 local elections, and possibly the January 2020 national elections a year-and-a-half later. They chose party stalwart and ex-Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) from a crowded field, winning with over 52 percent of the vote. Wu, though a local Taiwanese, is a protege and associate of ex-President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the powerful party “mainlander” elites who mostly descend from the exiled KMT leadership from China that arrived in 1949. He’s stiff and wooden in public, but he’s a solid and reliable party man. [FULL STORY]
