By Joe Hung, Special to The China Post
Why don't they exercise their Constitutional right of election? The answer is not far to seek. It's because they are, if anything, cynics at heart. They are knowledgeable enough to understand practically all politicians are crooks. They know whatever campaign promises the politicians make, aside from pork barrel projects and outright government-funded bribes to voters in the form of allowances and compensation, won't be kept. They also know government corruption isn't an isolated case found only in Taiwan. Corruption is present worldwide and has persisted since mankind formed the first government. So, there is no reason for these cynics among us to vote in those politicians they disdain.
They, along with the majority of the voters, are facing two national elections. A new Legislative Yuan or parliament has to be elected on Jan. 12 next year. A successor to President Chen Shui-bian, who will leave office on May 20, has to be elected on March 22.
Do the swing voters excuse themselves again, just as they used to do?
Of course, it is nearly impossible to predict their turnout, but chances are they will stay away from the legislative elections but cast their ballots to decide who will succeed President Chen.
Their absence from the general election will barely affect its outcome. Altogether 428 candidates are vying for 113 seats at stake. Of them, 79 will be elected "regional" lawmakers -- one each from a single constituency. Six of the 79 seats are reserved for aborigines. The remaining 34 are legislators at large.
Come Jan. 12, each voter is required to cast two ballots, one for a candidate and the other for a party. Lawmakers at large will be chosen from among the candidates recommended by political parties according to proportional representation. The voters will also be asked to vote on two referendums: one for recovery of unlawfully obtained assets of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the other against government corruption. Needless to say, both are uncalled-for referendums. Swing voters are most likely to refuse to vote, but the rest of the electorate will follow their professed inclination to vote. As a result, the opposition KMT will need little help from swing voters to retain a parliamentary majority.
The presidential race is a different story. The KMT fields Ma Ying-jeou, a mainlander. His Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) rival Frank Hsieh is a Taipei-born native islander. Both will need the support of swing voters to win the nation's highest public office.
Ma takes pride in being a man of probity. However, he was indicted for corruption, charged with misusing his expense account while serving as mayor of Taipei from 1998 to 2006. He was acquitted in the first trial, but the prosecution has appealed. (Unlike in the United States, public prosecutors in Taiwan, where the statutory law is practiced, may appeal a not-guilty verdict.) The Taiwan High Court is expected to hand down a verdict before the end of this year. If he were convicted, Ma would be all but doomed, for his "Mr. Clean" image, which alone might induce swing voters to support him, is damaged beyond repair.
Should the appellate court turn down the appeal of the prosecution, Ma would have a hard time extenuating his inherited sin of being the Hong Kong-born son of a mainlander KMT apparatchik. Hsieh and his pro-independence DPP supporters have a ready-made tag for Ma: the man who is going to sell Taiwan to China. The KMT standard bearer knows it full well and is doing what he can to show that he is acceding to what he believes is the common will of the people to seek independence for Taiwan. Public opinion surveys indicate at least 75 percent of the voters want independence. There is at least a fifth of the people, almost all of them mainlanders, who favor eventual unification with China. But the fact is that only a minority, perhaps no more than 20 percent of all the voters, are hardcore independence supporters. By far, the great majority of the people in Taiwan prefer the status quo. Almost all swing voters belong to this majority. In fact, they don't care whether Taiwan gains independence or is brought back to China's fold. They are highly individualistic and do not possess the zeal that is characteristic of revolutionaries. They have no cause to fight for. They could care less what government they live under, so long as they can live their comfortable middle-class lives.
In his 2008 campaign, Ma seems to have forgotten the apolitical nature of swing voters. He is trying to woo them by distancing himself from the anti-independence voters. That's why he has called for a referendum on Taiwan's return to the United Nations as the Republic of China, immediately after the ruling party proposed one on accession to that world body as Taiwan. He has also declared he would not start dialogue with Beijing over unification, if he were elected. However, in doing so, Ma does not know that he is doing himself a disservice by alienating his mainlander supporters, while failing to rally swing voters behind him.
When Hsieh plays his "hate China" card, Taiwan's swing voters, most of whom are Hoklo and Hakka islanders who haven't forgotten the bloody Feb. 28 Incident of 1947, will be emotionally roused to vote overwhelmingly, if not en masse, for anybody but a Chinese mainlander in the March 22 election.