Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Huang Kuo-chang/Facebook
QUESTiONS ABOUT WHETHER the TPP and KMT will cooperate in the upcoming local elections have been raised, with TPP chair Huang Kuo-chang announcing that he will run for New Taipei mayor. Huang announcing this mayoral run takes place shortly after a meeting between him and newly-elected KMT party chair Cheng Li-wun, known for her outspoken pro-China views.
It is known that New Taipei mayor Hou You-yi of the KMT wishes to run his deputy mayor as his successor. Previously, Huang had indicated that he was seemingly willing to back out.
Though the meeting between Cheng and Huang concluded with both sides promising to work together, there is reason to be skeptical of this claim. During her run for KMT party chair, Cheng indicated that she was open to the possibility of cooperation, but did not see why the KMT necessarily needed to make way for another party.
Have ties soured between the KMT and TPP? Ties between the KMT and TPP may be under duress at present because of recent actions by the Executive Yuan, in which Premier Cho Jung-tai refused to sign off on legislation for subsidies to local governments, which was backed by both the TPP and KMT. This was the first time in Taiwanese history that the premier had refused to sign off on legislation passed by the Legislative Yuan.
In response, the DPP has challenged the KMT to file for a motion of no-confidence in Cho. If this occurred, as president, Lai Ching-te would have the authority to dissolve the legislature and call for a new set of legislative elections.
The KMT could potentially campaign again in a new set of elections. After surviving the Great Recall Movement against it earlier this year, in which civic efforts were made to recall all KMT legislators in reaction against the KMT’s gutting of the government budget, the KMT could even see itself as in a strong position. If the Great Recall Movement was an event without parallel in Taiwanese history, in that there had never been the concerted attempt to recall all legislators belonging to a specific political party, the KMT survived the recalls handily. Not a single KMT legislator was recalled, even if one notes that recalls are very different from elections, and all electoral districts in which recalls were held had voted KMT during the last set of elections.
By contrast, the TPP has far less incentive to allow for a new set of elections. The TPP could potentially stand to be wiped out entirely by elections. This is especially the case due to the fact that the TPP has aligned with the KMT on all its major initiatives in the past two years, including the controversial budget cuts and the effort to expand legislative powers that sparked the Bluebird Movement last year. Likewise, in the 2024 election cycle, the TPP contemplated running a joint presidential ticket with the TPP.
The TPP’s brand has, under the leadership of Huang Kuo-chang and Ko Wen-je before him, become increasingly indistinguishable from that of the KMT itself. In aligning with the KMT too closely, the TPP has failed to build an alternative from the KMT, instead becoming too similar to it. As such, voters may not have any reason to vote for the TPP except for the fact that it is a smaller party than the KMT.
This is, in effect, the opposite strategy that Huang adapted when he was the leader of the post-Sunflower Movement political party, the NPP. At the time–well before Huang defected to the pan-Blue camp–Huang refused to cooperate with the DPP ahead of the 2020 presidential elections over fears that the NPP’s brand would become indistinguishable from that of the DPP, leading to the eventual fragmentation of the NPP because of fears that a split vote would result in a KMT victory. Huang has now done the opposite, in hewing far too closely to the KMT–the major party in the pan-Blue camp–that the TPP faces dissolution because it has too close of a relation to the KMT.
Ko Wen-je may currently aim to make his return to the TPP and an active political party following his lengthy imprisonment, even as it is probable that Ko will return to jail after he is sentenced next year. Consequently, Huang may seek to take up a position as New Taipei mayoral candidate for the TPP if he is no longer able to hold onto the chair position of the party, so as to remain an active figure in political life.
But the choice to run for New Taipei mayor may indicate that the TPP finds it increasingly imperative to find some way to distinguish itself from the KMT, otherwise risk becoming at the mercy of the larger party. This remains uncertain, particularly as the TPP still seeks a joint endorsement in some races, as in Changhua.