Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Huang Kuo-chang/Facebook
UNCERTAINTIES REMAIN about whether the KMT and TPP will cooperate in the upcoming local elections later this year.
The two pan-Blue parties are scheduled to release a joint party platform on March 13th. This suggests that the two parties intend to align their political messaging in the upcoming local elections,
At the same time, what is less clear is how the two parties intend to cooperate if both parties intend to field candidates in the same electoral district. This has been particularly visible as a stumbling block in New Taipei, with party leader Huang Kuo-chang aiming to run for mayor, but Taipei deputy mayor Lee Shu-chuan positioned to run by the KMT. Lee would succeed outgoing New Taipei mayor Hou You-yi of the KMT–the KMT’s candidate in 2024 presidential elections–while Huang aims for the mayorship in New Taipei due to having previously been legislator in Xizhi.
For his part, Huang has stated that he is willing to back out and play the role of an auxiliary for Lee, should Lee prove to be the stronger candidate. At the same time, the race to date has already been marked by several occasions in which Huang has refused to back down in favor of Lee and instead put forward his own candidacy. Between Lee and Huang, Huang is better-known as a national political figure, while Lee emphasizes local credentials and aims to coast off of the reputation of both Hou You-yi in New Taipei but also Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an.
The TPP has historically touted itself as a “white” political party distinct from both the pan-Blue and pan-Green camps. When the party established itself, the party charter contained an unusual provision that would have allowed party members to simultaneously be part of another political party.
Nevertheless, the party has aligned closer to the pan-Blue camp in past years. The TPP has backed the KMT to the hilt when it came to controversial measures such as freezing the Constitutional Court, drastic cuts to the government budget, and expanding legislative powers to allow for new powers of investigation. This has put the TPP at risk of simply becoming a “little blue” party whose main difference from the KMT is simply being a smaller party. For her part, new KMT party chair Cheng Li-wun has suggested in the past that there is no need for the KMT to cooperate with the TPP, but more recently suggested openness to the possibility of cooperating.
Both the KMT and TPP are seeking to avoid the situation in which both parties field candidates and this splits the vote, resulting in a DPP win. This is what occurred in 2024.
Likewise, the two parties are probably hoping to avoid a similar spectacle to the televised argument between TPP founder and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je, Hou You-yi as the KMT presidential candidate, independent pan-Blue candidate Terry Gou, former President Ma Ying-jeou, and KMT party chair Eric Chu that occurred before the 2024 election. Apart from that neither Ko nor Hou refused to back down in favor of the other, the bickering between the pan-Blue political figures was embarrassing for all involved.
Still, it is hard not to question if both parties have not learned anything from the past. Apart from that the KMT and TPP may still ultimately fight over choice of candidates, the TPP is otherwise drawing too close to the KMT on its political platform in a manner that minimizes differences between the two parties.
Indeed, it is further to be seen if the KMT simply tires of having to deal with the presence of the TPP at a certain point and simply seeks to edge out the party. In the midst of the Great Recall Movement last year–an attempt to recall all KMT legislators in response to the pan-Blue camp’s drastic freeze of government budgets–a controversial proposal by Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an would have called for the dissolution of the legislature and a new set of elections to be held. In such a hypothetical set of elections, which otherwise did not make much sense in terms of political strategy, the TPP could have potentially simply been cleared away.