Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: SSR2000/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
IN MANY WAYS, the upcoming recalls in Taiwan will be a contest between traditional politics and efforts to move beyond the clientelist and patronage-based style of politics that have long existed in Taiwan. We might examine why.
The recall vote targets KMT legislators serving in district seats, though recall measures do not apply to legislators elected by party list vote. No DPP legislator will be facing a recall vote. Though DPP Nantou county councilor Chen Yu-ling faced a KMT-organized “revenge recall”, this did not meet the required number of votes to be binding.
In many ways, the dynamics of the recall votes are similar to an election year. Apart from campaign rallies that take place across Taiwan, overseas Taiwanese have also been called on to return home to vote, amidst reports that China has sought to make it easier for Taiwanese businessmen in China to return to vote during the recalls.
Yet the wave of recalls is unprecedented, in that there has never been an attempt to recall all KMT legislators before. Though there were attempts to recall much-hated KMT legislators in the years after the Sunflower Movement through what was termed the “Appendectomy Project,” these were largely unsuccessful and did not attempt to recall all KMT legislators.
A sense of desperation, likewise, is driving the recall votes. The KMT is seen as wholly willing to step on due process in a way that it was never in the past, through its cuts to the government budget, efforts to expand legislative powers, and freezing of the Constitutional Court. Some take the view that the KMT’s actions surpass the severity of the actions that triggered the 2014 Sunflower Movement in scale. Still, the KMT may not have learned this lesson, continuing to bank on traditional platforms such as advocacy of nuclear power, calling for economic reliance of Taiwan on China despite declining investment in China, and claiming that it is the only political party in Taiwan able to maintain stable cross-strait relations.
Still, one notes that the KMT has always performed more strongly at the grassroots level of Taiwanese politics, due to long-standing patronage and clientelist networks that date back to the authoritarian period and which remain part of everyday politics. Indeed, vote buying continues to take place in local elections as a widespread practice. To take an example, post-Sunflower Movement activist turned Yunlin county councilor Liao Yu-hsien reported that local constituents were paid 6,000 NT to vote for any other candidate besides her in the 2022 local elections. Political retribution continues to take place at the local level of politics as well, with local politicians shut out of meetings or targeted with lawsuits if they attempt to call establishment local political factions to account for their actions.
It proved a surprise in 2016 when the DPP was able to hold the majority in the legislature for the first time in history, in that few expected the DPP to be able to win local political positions such as legislative seats–it was previously thought the DPP could only win at the national level due to concerns about cross-strait relations that had long been determinant of the outcome of presidential elections in Taiwan. It must be remembered that, in spite of talk about the “two turnover test” in terms of transitions of presidential power as a metric for Taiwan’s successful democratization, it was only ever from 2016 to 2024 that a non-KMT political party ever held the majority in the legislature. In this sense, the “two turnover test” likely prioritizes the presidency to the exclusion of examining democratization in terms of the dynamics of local politics, as well as how democratic institutions take root at the grassroots level in political systems.
Yet the result of the 2024 elections indicated a return to the status quo. The power of the KMT has clearly not been broken at the local level–or has it?
But what proves of surprise in the recall wave is that the KMT was unable to organize “revenge recalls” against DPP legislators and that such efforts sputtered. In fact, many KMT local party officials later fell afoul of the law for copying party rolls and engaging in signature fraud to try and collect signatures.
This development could indicate that the KMT has become surprisingly weak at the local level. It is possible that the KMT has increasingly been hollowed out in the past decade of DPP governance, possibly through that it no longer has access to the party assets it once retained from property seizures during the authoritarian period, due to DPP legislation targeting KMT party assets during the Tsai administration. Likewise, some of the institutions that previously allowed for KMT power in rural areas, such as farmers’ associations and irrigation associations, have since been nationalized.
To counter this, the KMT has resorted to traditional means of politicking, such as forcing cash handouts of 10,000 NT to each citizen through the legislature with just two weeks left before campaigning. Moreover, the KMT has pushed for a national referendum on nuclear energy.
At the same time, it is unclear if attempts to bribe the public will work or if this will come off as a desperate ploy by the KMT. This proves a litmus test as to whether traditional means of politicking still work for the KMT or if the party has hit a stumbling block.
Indeed, it is also unclear as to whether the KMT’s attempt to leverage on a national referendum on nuclear energy will assist the party, in that the referendum is largely overshadowed by the recalls. Part of the KMT’s mistake may be that there was no real publicity cycle for the referendum, seeing as it was passed through the legislature rather than by collecting signatures from members of the public. This, too, may indicate weakness on the part of the KMT.
Much remains uncertain for the referendums, then. The referendums will serve to demonstrate whether there have genuinely been fundamental shifts at the grassroots of Taiwanese politics, or whether this is wishful thinking.