Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Chiang Wan-an/Facebook
THE KMT RALLIED for food safety last weekend, lashing out at the Lai administration over a food oil safety scandal after accusations of cooking oil adulteration by Central Oil Corporation. This would be hitting out at a familiar political issue in Taiwan, one that routinely leads to scandals every decade or so. Indeed, the previous major food scandal affected Ting Hsin and was leveraged to attack the then-ruling Ma administration by the DPP. One notes that food safety scandals can be reliably counted on to galvanize rage in Taiwanese politics.
Notably, Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an took center stage during the rally, in that the rally was largely initiated and led by Chiang. This has been interpreted as reflecting Chiang’s presidential ambitions.
Indeed, Taichung mayor Lu Shiow-yen was widely spoken of as being the KMT’s likely 2028 presidential frontrunner before the rise of current party chair Cheng Li-wun. Cheng has also made a number of moves that have been interpreted as signaling presidential ambitions, including visiting both China and the US. Although a major strike against Chiang in the KMT is that he is considered too young, as well as that electoral odds do not favor mayors perceived as abandoning their cities to run for president, the rally seems to indicate that Chiang does seem to want to simply wait his turn.
During the rally, however, Chiang made an unusual proposal. Chiang suggested that a vote of no-confidence in the cabinet would be a proportional response to the scandal. If so, this would trigger a mechanism that would allow the president to dissolve the legislature and trigger a new set of legislative elections.
This is not the first time that Chiang has made this proposal. Chiang previously made the same proposal during the Great Recall Movement, at a time in which it genuinely appeared as though the KMT would face widespread losses during the movement. Triggering a new set of elections entirely, rather than a recall, could potentially be disadvantageous to the KMT, so it is somewhat unclear why he made the proposal.
As for this time around, Chiang claims to have the support of a number of KMT legislators. KMT legislative caucus leader Fu Kun-chi has suggested that there is a lack of internal consensus on the issue, however, which may mean that Chiang does not have the support of the KMT legislative caucus as a whole.
As for the TPP, one notes that the pan-Blue-aligned third party would fear potentially being pushed out by a new set of elections if the KMT refused to make way for it. But Chiang suggested that the KMT could allot five seats that it would have already gotten to the TPP, allowing it to potentially gain more seats.
Either way, one notes a number of unusual proposals by the KMT to reshape Taiwan’s political system in recent memory. One notes that late last year, a group of KMT politicians advanced a proposal for Taiwan to transition to two-stage presidential elections. According to this group of politicians, this proposal would solve the problem in Taiwan that has led to a political deadlock for close to two years–that the executive branch is controlled by the DPP, while the legislature is controlled by the KMT. The proposal would have mandated a second round of elections to take place fourteen days after the first round of elections, as a run-off between the two leading candidates. The proposal also specifies that a presidential and vice presidential candidate must receive 20% of votes from all eligible voters, not just half of the votes from those who participate.
Still, the proposal would have required constitutional changes. Even alongside its ally, the TPP, the KMT currently does not have enough votes to change the constitution.
The proposal was advanced by KMT legislator Weng Hsiao-ling, alongside fellow legislators Lo Chih-chiang, Wu Tsung-hien, and Yeh Yuan-chih. But the proposal was generally thought to be the brainchild of Lo Chih-chiang, who is currently running for KMT party chair, as a means of boosting the profile of his bid for chair. This, too, may explain Chiang’s proposal, if he simply aims to gain more public attention as part of his bid for the KMT presidential candidacy.