Want China Times
Editorial
Date: 2015-10-05

The implosion of Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang has truly been something to behold. One

The ROC national flag and the KMT flag at the party’s headquarters in Taipei, Nov. 22, 2014. (File photo/Wang Yuan-mao)

probably has to go back to the Chinese civil war to find a time the party was in such disarray, and just as Mao’s Communists crossed the Yangtze to capture the ROC capital Nanjing in April 1949, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party now finds itself massed on the bank of the river on the brink of almost certain victory in January’s presidential and legislative elections.

After the ruling party was handed a humiliating defeat in last November’s local elections, many had expected the KMT to regroup and be more responsive to mainstream public opinion under its new chair Eric Chu in time for next year’s elections. Instead, the party center has gone down the Tea Party route, doubling down on its Chinese Nationalist ideology and the policies that have made the Ma administration so unpopular. This is reflected in the left-field choice of Hung Hsiu-chu from the party’s deep-blue periphery as its presidential candidate after more senior figures opted not to pursue the nomination.

The speed of the KMT’s collapse is nothing short of astonishing and furthermore is almost entirely self-inflicted. Though the external environment is admittedly hostile, the party had a number of options to at least retain its legislative majority next year even if it could not hold on to the presidency. It has not taken them.     [FULL  STORY]