Jaw Shaw-kong walked into a trap

Home Editorials Wed, Mar 03, 2021 page8 By Chin Heng-wei 金恒煒 Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), who has rejoined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) after nearly three decades, has said that he wants to be the KMT’s chairman and presidential candidate. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said that Jaw has got it wrong from the start and risks losing everything. The KMT seems unwilling to amend its requirement that only people who have been a party member for at least one year can stand for election as chairperson. Furthermore, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said he wants to run for a second term. With his party chairman dream in tatters, Jaw also has little chance of running for president. Jaw has got himself into an awkward situation that looks like the “Soong Mayling (宋美齡) trap.” After former president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) death in 1975, his wife Soong Mayling was no match for his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), who was a fully fledged politician, so she flew off to the US on a chartered plane. Once she was there, she could no longer influence the political situation in Taiwan. Following Chiang Ching-kuo’s death in 1988, Soong thought she could make a comeback, but she had to grudgingly accept that the much-changed political environment would no longer allow her to have a say in national affairs. All she could do was dream of her lost kingdom. For all her power and influence, “dragon empress” Soong could not make a comeback after 13 years abroad. Jaw is not only puny compared with Soong, he has also spent 25 years in the garbage can of history. Does he really think he can make a comeback? Whereas Soong was stuck in the Chiang-era fantasy of “counterattacking the mainland” and refusing to coexist with “outlaw” communist China, Jaw is stuck in the context of 25 years ago. Jaw faces a younger generation that believes in “natural independence,” but he wants to link up with China. He is way out of touch with public opinion. Jaw wants Taiwan to buy COVID-19 vaccines from China, but a poll by Global Views Monthly showed that only 1.3 percent of Taiwanese would receive a Chinese vaccine. Jaw’s political naivete does not stop there. He has also been clamoring for President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), as chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), to pledge that she will not pursue Taiwanese independence. First of all, the DPP has a “Taiwan independence charter” and everyone knows it as a “Taiwan independence party,” so even if Tsai does not wish to pursue independence, she could not defy the party line. Second, if the DPP ever dropped its demand for Taiwanese independence, it would immediately turn into “KMT 2.1.” The DPP knows full well that the KMT’s niche is already occupied. Third, whether Taiwan pursues independence would be decided by the public. Even China knows that this is unstoppable, so how could a few phrases of empty rhetoric from Jaw subdue Tsai or crush the Taiwanese independence trend? Fourth, China’s annexation and poor treatment of Hong Kong prove that being “pro-China” is a dead-end. On an ideological and institutional level, the struggle between independence and unification is also one between democracy and dictatorship. If Taiwan had not been democratized, would there be any such thing as “independence”? The latest issue Jaw has brought up is that of a parliamentary Cabinet system. He is unhappy about the president having all the power, with no checks and balances. Alluding to the March 19, 2004, assassination attempt on then-president Chen Shui-bian and then-vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) when they were running for a second term, Jaw went out on a limb by saying: “It feels great to be the president, with all that power. When a president does not want to step down, that is what led to the ‘two bullets incident.’” Jaw lost the thread even more when he said “President Tsai Ing-wen still has about three years in office and cannot serve another term, so why does not she push for a Cabinet system now?” Jaw said that if Tsai does not do so, he would push for a Cabinet system in his first year after being elected president. He also said that if he succeeds in getting the relevant laws amended, he would eventually stand for election as a legislator and aim to become prime minister. He is definitely counting his chickens before they are hatched. Taiwan’s system of government is not so much a presidential system as a super-presidential one. Why did then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) want to amend the Constitution in 1997 to remove the Legislative Yuan’s power to approve the premier? It was because he thought that former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) of the KMT would be elected president and that the DPP would win a legislative majority. He got it half right. If Tsai were to amend the Constitution to implement a Cabinet system, the DPP would definitely stay in government forever. Tsai would remain in power in three years’ time, and she could even be in office longer than former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years and the 15-year reign of soon-to-depart German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Chin Heng-wei is a political commentator. Translated by Julian Clegg