Taiwan Goes to the POIIS

...Designed by the revolution?ary Sun Yat-sen, the system was supposed to ensure representation of the people's will...

...Justice Minister Ma Ying-jeou has prom?ised to resign if a drive against electoral manipulation fails...

...Last year the Nationalists found themselves unable to defeat key reform legislation involving financial disclosure requirements for government officials and lawmakers, because a num?ber of its members broke ranks and sided with the DPP...

...He has guided Taiwan from au?thoritarianism to something even mem?bers of the opposition acknowledge is close to institutional democracy...

...We'll fight, if necessary, to maintain our territorial in?tegrity.' Most people here do not dismiss such warnings as mere bellicose rhetoric...

...An influential retired general, Hsu Linung, has cast his lot with the New Party...

...In any event, during the year since its formation the New Party has come to occupy an inter?esting position on Taiwan's political spec?trum: On muckraking matters it tends to be in alliance with the Democratic Pro?gressives...

...PIERO TOZZI HAS taught at Taiwan Normal University and worked on private immigration projects...

...NURTURING DEMOCRACY Taiwan Goes to Polls BY ROSS A.SNEL AND PIERO TOZZI TAIPEI FOR MORE THAN a half decade, as attention focused on the bloody repression of democracy demon?strators in Tiananmen Square and main?land China's continuing human rights vio?lations, this island state has been under?going a little-noticed political liberaliza?tion...

...That is not to say its 1996 presidential prospects would be crushed...

...A more neutral observer, Chu Yun-han, profes?sor of political science at National Tai?wan University and member of the Insti?tute for National Policy Research, has sim?ilarly expressed skepticism...

...The confron?tation preceded the disclosure vote and alienated the youthful reformers who re?tain a mainland allegiance...

...by this fiction, his was the legitimate Chinese government, in temporary exile on Taiwan...

...the opposition DPP, campaigning on a pro-independence platform, fared poor?ly, garnering less than 24 per cent...

...Among other far-reaching conse?quences, the move effectively ended the ban on the formation of opposition par?ties...

...But a recent amend?ment to the Constitution has mandated quadrennial popular contests for the of?fice...

...The Kuomintang came away with over 70 per cent of the vote...

...On December 3 the Republic of China's two largest cities, Taipei and Kaohsiung, will hold their first truly competitive may?oral elections...

...In last November's balloting for mayors and magistrates in second-tier cities, the Kuomintang held its own, win?ning 15 of the 23 races...

...Final?ly, at some point before President Lee Teng-hui's current term expires in March 1996, the ROC's 20 million people will choose their next chief executive...

...According to Chu, the ruling party's influence over the judicial system and the military, its effective control of Taiwan's three televi?sion stations, and its huge financial re?sources obstruct the goal of fair elections...

...I believe they will set their limit and just crack down on the people at the fringe," says the DPP's Tsai...

...In 1949, when the Nationalists sought refuge here from the Communists, they brought with them the complex govern?mental apparatus that is in place to this day...

...The provisions had been in place since the late 1940s, when the Nationalists and the Communists were engaged in civil war...

...Two of the four major papers, the Independence Evening Post and the Liberty Times, actively cham?pion liberal change...

...Remarkably, the whole reform process was begun in 1986 by Chiang Ching-kuo, son of the autocratic Chiang Kai-shek...

...Although it will continue to with?hold diplomatic recognition, the White House announced in September that Tai?wan's representatives may now openly, albeit unofficially, enter U.S...

...Tsai Shih-yuan of the DPP echoes his criticism: "If the Kuomintang does not give cash to voters, [it] won't get more than 30 per cent of the popular vote...

...One of the New Party's found?ers, former Finance Minister Wang Chienshien, alleges that the ruling party main?tains control of elected offices through widespread bribery and the intervention of local gangsters in campaigns...

...A lingering taint of corruption could add to the Kuomintang's troubles in De?cember, when it will be up against strong candidates...

...Despite the Kuomintang majority, the Legislature is no longer a rubber stamp for its policies...

...The elder Chiang's government has been charitably described as "an authoritarian regime with an inhibited center," but its inhibitions are a matter of contention...

...The only other Kuomintang figure to receive that order of respect is party Vice Chairman Lin Yang-kang, another native, who resigned as head of the Judiciary in June to explore the possibility of a presidential bid...

...Today the party of the Chiangs, the Kuomintang, shares the political land?scape with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the leading voice for Tai?wanese independence...

...Another important reform of the Lee years, the "Taiwanization" of the Legis?lature and the National Assembly, has helped to dispel the lingering power of the old guard...

...In all, party Chairman Shih Ming-teh has said he will expel 22 party members and punish 23...

...the Chinese New Party, a haven for reform-minded maver?icks from the Kuomintang...

...The scandal has the national govern?ment and the Kuomintang talking tough...

...Prosecutors have indicted over 460 people, including dozens of council speakers and deputy speakers...

...In short, democratization here has its limits, and those limits are largely de?fined by Beijing...

...not in Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, or mainland China??are citi?zens similarly enfranchised...

...government offices to discuss trade and cultural issues...

...On July 15, 1987, Chiang Ching-kuo lifted the martial law imposed by his fa?ther...

...Under Lee, the government virtually abolished its "blacklist," which as late as 1992 numbered nearly 300 exiled dissidents, allowing all but five to return to the island and participate in politics...

...In?deed, even the DPP's leaders, aware that fear of antagonizing the mainland con?tributed heavily to the party's poor per?formance in the 1991 Assembly elec?tions, have muted their separationist call...

...THE KUOMINTANG schism may have been inevitable after Pres?ident Lee's Taiwan-oriented branch of the party prevailed over the old guard in a power struggle that ousted Prime Minister Hao Pei-tsun...

...The Legislature decriminalized the nonvio?lent advocacy of Taiwanese independence and Communism...

...Meanwhile, widespread complaints of fraud in the March 1 elections for city and county council leaders have spurred the government to launch a sweeping crackdown...

...on such questions as the estab?lishment of direct air links to the main?land and promoting unification talks with the People's Republic??all anathema to the DPP??its appeal is to the old guard...

...Still, the opposition doubts that the cleanup will reach beyond the local level...

...Both men are ahead of the Kuomintang incumbent in the latest surveys, and the loss of the capital's top office would be a severe blow for the ruling party...

...Chairman Shih is careful to make clear that the Democratic Progressives would never take actions contrary to the wishes of the majority of the electorate...

...together with former Prime Minister Hao, who is urging a "new alliance for demo?cratic reform," he may lead a signficant faction out of the Kuomintang...

...Its democratic potential, however, was never put to the test...

...Chen Shui-bian, a DPP law?maker who is much respected for his ef?forts to expose government waste and fraud, is running for mayor in Taipei...

...Says Wang, "The quality of this democracy is no good...

...This bloc of rebels then became the nucleus of a novel political organization of second-generation exiles, the Chinese New Party...

...And now it is about to take the last, landmark steps toward representative de?mocracy...

...Beijing has always been wary of Taipei's liberalizing tendencies, in part because they contrast so unfavorably with its own policy of re?pression, and in part because democracy might strengthen Taiwan's pro-indepen?dence parties...

...and over 70 marginal political groups...

...According to the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Ross A. SNEL has served as a news edi?tor and anchor at International Communi?ty Radio Taipei and as Taiwan correspondent/or Radio Australia...

...Thus far, the rift among the Nation?alists has done relatively little damage to the party...

...President Lee helped secure the cause of liberalism by persuading the Assembly to repeal the special constitutional provi?sions that had authorized martial law...

...So is New Party co-founder Jaw Shao-kang, who received more votes than any other candidate in the 1992 legislative contest...

...He is esteemed by even Taiwanese separationists as a native son...

...Nonetheless, the party remains dominant on every level of government...

...But democratization threatens to ex?acerbate Taiwan's prickly relationship with the People's Republic...

...When further polling for council seats in these jurisdictions and for township mayors took place last January, the Kuomintang fared less well...

...Taiwan's voters are get?ting more of a say in their own govern?ment, but they are not quite ready to ignore the voice from the other side of the Taiwan Strait...

...It consists of five separate branches, or yuan (Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Examination, and Control), mediated by the President, plus a National Assembly with the supreme power of constitutional amendment...

...Chiang Kai-shek had frozen them in office to authenticate his claim to all China...

...Media reports of the last three years substantiate the charges of corruption, and a recent poll conducted by a private political watchdog group suggests that the public has caught on...

...The opposition has its own explana?tion of the Kuomintang's success at the ballot box...

...The courts have sentenced convicted offenders to as many as 50 months in jail...

...To prove that it can keep its own house in order, the DPP leadership announced that it would discipline them and others for improprieties...

...It suffered a decline in its overall vote share and lost majorities in two cities and in two county councils...

...Although the regime started to conduct supplementary elections in 1969 to fill vacancies and increase Taiwanese representation, full general elections were indefinitely de?ferred...

...That is a radical departure from the previous prac?tice of having the National Asssembly make the choice...

...Nowhere else in Chinese polities...

...On the con?trary, tea-leaf readers like Professor Chu think President Lee will probably be un?beatable if he decides to enter the race...

...24 per cent thought the DPP would also engage in the practice...

...Chiang declared martial law upon his arrival in Taiwan, and arrogated total power...

...One 1992 returnee, independence activist Mark Chen, was elected to a county magistracy last fall...

...In addition, for the first time ever, the residents of Taiwan Prov?ince will pick their own governor...

...Members of the Kuomintang make up the majority of those accused, but the DPP, the purport?edly "clean" alternative, has not emerged unsoiled: Seven Democratic Progressives were at the top of the indictment list...

...Following the younger Chiang's death in January 1988, his handpicked succes?sor, Lee Teng-hui, the first native of Tai?wan to hold the presidency, accelerated reform...

...number of Taiwanese newspapers has increased tenfold as well...

...A generation passed before the Judiciary ordered the original parliamen?tarians to retire, and elections were at last held in December 1991...

...The parliamentary bodies were saddled with aging Kuomintang rep?resentatives elected in 1947 from main?land provinces...

...So as not to prejudice its claim of sov?ereignty over the Chinese mainland, the government cleverly provided for a num?ber of at-large Assembly seats, distrib?uted among the major parties according to their vote share, to represent mainland constituencies...

...FOR ITS PERSISTENT, if fitful, move?ment toward democracy, the Re?public of China has drawn a friend?ly nod from the Clinton Administration in the form of a modest upgrade in rela?tions...

...In October 1992 a ranking Communist Party Politburo member, Li Ruihuan, bluntly told a group of journal?ists from Taiwan and Hong Kong: "Our stance on the Taiwan independence issue is firm and unequivocal...

...Many native Taiwanese harbor bitter memories of the February 28 Incident, the 1947 massacre by Chiang's troops...

...It also lost ground in the balloting this past June for township representatives and community chiefs...

...Almost one-third of the respondents believed the Kuomintang was most likely to purchase votes...

...The divide between natives and Nation?alists has not yet been surmounted...