Taiwan

The Nationalists are back in Taiwan

An emphatic win for the Kuomintang’s Ma Ying-jeou

THE predictions were for a much narrower race. Yet Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist party, or Kuomintang (KMT), won by a landslide in presidential elections in Taiwan on Saturday March 22nd. Taiwanese turned out in high numbers—about 100,000 alone poured back from mainland China to vote. They gave Mr Ma over 58% of the vote, a 17-point lead over his rival, Frank Hsieh of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and returned to power through the ballot box a party that had once ruled Taiwan by force.

Mr Hsieh himself had begun his political career as a lawyer defending opponents of the KMT regime. After admitting defeat this weekend, he announced his retirement from politics. Following eight years of lacklustre rule under Prsident Chen Shui-bian, the DPP’s future is now uncertain. In January, the KMT also scored a convincing victory in parliamentary elections. After Mr Ma’s inauguration on May 20th, the party will once again dominate Taiwan’s political landscape.

Scion of a KMT family, Harvard-educated lawyer and a former mayor of Taipei, Mr Ma, 57, had always been marked for the highest office, and the KMT’s famously ruthless machine did everything to get him there. Yet more than anything, he was helped by the DPP. Chen Shui-bian had won the presidency in 2000 by articulating the grievances of native Taiwanese whose voices had long been stifled by the KMT, a party historically dominated by mainlanders who had fought—and eventually lost—the civil war with the Chinese Communists. Mr Chen emphasised a new Taiwanese identity.

Yet Mr Chen soon appeared to insist on this identity at the expense of anything else. His agitation for formal Taiwanese independence riled not just China, but the United States, Taiwan’s protector. Under Mr Chen, economic initiatives always seemed to play second fiddle, and even then, DPP forces sounded discordant. Charges of corruption spread to Mr Chen’s family and close circle, which in the campaign did Mr Hsieh no favours.

The DPP’s mudslinging during the presidential election seemed to be final confirmation that the DPP, once a beacon of change and moral authority, had lost its way. Even in the DPP stronghold in the southern part of the island, Mr Ma made stunning headway, winning the city of Kaohsiung, Mr Hsieh’s political base. Perhaps Mr Chen, in one respect, had done too well in his fight for a Taiwanese identity. For while the DPP played up the politics of ethnic division between mainlanders and islanders—insinuating that Mr Ma would sell Taiwan out to China—the KMT’s candidate showed that it was possible to campaign as if the divisions had been healed: we are all Taiwanese now.

Mr Ma lays out an agenda to foster a more vibrant economy and to improve relations with China. He promises to be “a peacemaker not a troublemaker” after what he calls Mr Chen’s “adventurism”. That will curry favour with America—President George Bush was among the first to congratulate him for his victory. Mr Ma describes China, Taiwan’s largest trading partner, as an economic opportunity but a security threat. He wants to push for direct transport links with the mainland: those Taiwanese returning to vote had to fly via Hong Kong, while mainland tourists in Taiwan are nearly unknown. His eventual goal, he says, is a “common market”.

However, China’s military threat toTaiwan, which it claims to be a renegade province, remains. Mr Ma wants to build mutual trust and advocates a peace treaty between the two sides, something China’s President Hu Jintao has also endorsed. The starting point, says the president-elect, should be the “1992 consensus”, in which both China and Taiwan agreed that there was but “one China”, while begging to differ on how to define it. It is an elegant fudge that in theory could get both sides to talk about Taiwan’s future status again, but a fragile one. Just this month, China’s leaders, reacting angrily to anti-Chinese protests by Tibetans, have repeated that not only Tibet but also Taiwan are “inalienable” parts of China. Mr Ma, by contrast, insists as much as Mr Chen ever did on Taiwan’s sovereignty.

At home, the chief challenge for the soft-spoken Mr Ma is to assert control within a party, full of political thugs, in which he lacks a powerful base. Here he may struggle. Preferring the company of scholars and a family life rich in women (mother, wife, three sisters and two daughters) but no men, Mr Ma is not cut out for strong-arming, and at the least will need loyal henchmen to help him. In the election, he showed voters his gentle, conciliatory side. Just to succeed within his own party, let alone stand up to future Chinese bullying, he will need to show his grit.