Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: 護國大遶境/Facebook
WITH THE DEFEAT of the “Great Recall Movement” over the weekend, it is notable to observe that some claims in media discourse have sought to frame the results as a rebuke to the DPP, indicating that the Taiwanese public supports the KMT. Chinese nationalists have gone even further, suggesting that the results mean that the majority of Taiwanese identify as Chinese.
But this is hardly the case. It is not for nothing that the KMT failed to win the 2024 presidential election, marking an unprecedented third consecutive time that the DPP held the presidency. At the same time, the result of the 2024 elections indicated that the KMT still maintains a stranglehold on local politics in Taiwan, with the legislature reverting back to the status quo. It must be remembered that it was only from 2016 to 2024 that any non-KMT political party ever held the majority in the Taiwanese legislature.
Questions were raised ahead of the recall as to whether the KMT party machine had broken down, given the KMT’s failure to organize any wave of “revenge recalls” against the DPP. It does appear that the KMT local party machine has weakened. Even so, this was not sufficient to prevent the KMT from holding onto power in the legislature.
The recalls took place in pan-Blue areas that voted for the KMT in the last round of elections. In this sense, it would have been a challenge flipping such areas to begin with. The result of the recalls indicate not support for the KMT across Taiwan, but the maintenance of the pan-Blue status quo in these constituencies.
And such results are not generalizable. The recalls only took place within specific constituencies in Taiwan and are not reflective of public opinion across Taiwan as a whole. Perceptions have sometimes been misleading, in generalizing the results of voting in these constituencies to the views of Taiwanese society as a whole, because it is self-apparent that the recalls were a social movement all-encompassing of Taiwanese society. And so it may not be surprising that they have been misinterpreted as representing public opinion as a whole.
As a parallel phenomenon, if the KMT struggled to obtain signatures in areas that had swung pan-Green in the last elections, this is not so different from why recalls would fail in pan-Blue constituencies. If this is the case, that the KMT did not manage to organize any recall votes shows that recall organizers may have stronger mobilization capacity in pan-Blue constituencies when compared to how the KMT fares in pan-Green constituencies.
Still, the KMT is indeed very likely to frame the defeat of the recalls as indicating that it has a mandate from the Taiwanese public. The recalls will be understood not as a warning in traditional territories held by the KMT, but as a sign of support. In this sense, the KMT will continue full steam ahead with efforts to reshape the government in their image, even if they held back on such actions in the course of recall campaigning.
It is highly unlikely that any bipartisan consensus will emerge between the two parties after the recalls. Rather than be chastened, it is more probable that the KMT will continue with disruptive actions aimed at maximizing legislative power, while reducing the power of other branches of government.
Such actions will, no doubt, trigger a further wave of outrage against the KMT. To this extent, it will also eventually be the case that this outrage against the KMT eventually coincides with some election cycle that results in a DPP loss. It is important to remember that demographic trends are still against the KMT, which struggles with support among young people. Young people, after all, continue to overwhelmingly identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, and have been disinterested in backing the KMT on such grounds.
It is to be remembered that the emergence of the Bluebird Movement last year was the largest social movement in the relatively quiescent decade since the 2014 Sunflower Movement, mobilizing a new generation of youth who were too young to have participated in the Sunflower Movement, going from one hundred outside of the legislature to 100,000 in the streets of Taipei in a matter of weeks. Energy from the Bluebird Movement was pivoted rather quickly toward the Great Recall Movement.
But the past decade had seen a decline in civil society organizing, with the DPP in power. The powerful activist networks that played a role in the Sunflower Movement no longer existed and had to be rebuilt in the one year since the Bluebird Movement. Likewise, newer activists still lack experience, as members of the Sunflower Movement had accumulated experience in the years from the 2008 Wild Strawberry Movement to the Sunflower Movement in 2014.
In this sense, the Bluebird Movement and Great Recall Movement were the start of a wave of civic activism, rather than the end of one. Both movements are more analogous to the Wild Strawberry Movement of 2008 than the Sunflower Movement of 2014, in mobilizing new activist networks, rather than as the movement that served as the endgame of a wave of organizing that took place across a half decade.
But the failure of the Great Recall Movement does not mean that the Taiwanese public is disinterested in the threats posed to Taiwan by China, as it factors into Taiwan’s domestic politics. Rather, quite the opposite–that there had never been a wave of recalls on such a scale in Taiwanese history shows that there is a sizable portion of the public that is concerned about such issues and are politically mobilizing against such threats. But such threats did not resonate with swing voters, as well as residents of constituencies that swung pan-Blue in the 2024 elections.
It may be the case, then, that there were not enough appeals to constituents of such districts–who are not as sensitive to perceived threats from China as recall organizers were–on the basis of domestic issues. If there had been a greater focus on attacking the KMT’s failure on domestic political issues, such as low wages and housing, this could have perhaps been more persuasive to such voters.
Indeed, in spite of the emergence of some pan-Blue groups that opposed the current political trajectory of the KMT, the Great Recall Movement’s messaging was often primarily to those already concerned about threats from China rather than to swing voters and moderates.
It should be noted that the DPP and KMT have become increasingly indistinguishable on domestic political issues, except for their stance on cross-strait relations. Yet the budget cuts pushed for by the KMT would have, in fact, had a severe negative impact on bread-and-butter issues that affect Taiwanese across the board. Substantial cuts were made to fields ranging from agriculture to subsidies meant to keep electricity prices low and funding that would have gone to housing subsidies. Attacks should have been made on the KMT’s actions in this regard, and in terms of their influence on regular Taiwanese, rather than only framing KMT actions as at the behest of their minders in China.