Too much work and too much happening in Taiwan to write or translate a long piece on anything specific, so instead I’ll write about some recent developments the Taipei Times may not report.

The winners are getting ready for work. Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is already planning her administration, having promised talks on a bilateral FTA after meeting with Japanese representatives yesterday (link). Legislative candidates are riding cars around town thanking their voters (link). The media are speculating about who will soon hold positions of power (link).

Meanwhile, the leaders of the losing parties are keeping political and cultural tradition by resigning, the implication being things went wrong because of their own personal failings. The fallen tributes in the Hungry for Power Games include KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), KMT Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) (who appears to have decided to be a good sportsman by vacating his post before running for chair), MKT Chairwoman Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩) (a surprising move because the MKT had been a one-woman-party (with one monk behind the throne) until now), TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝), SDP Convener Fan Yun (范雲), (update) and Green Party conveners Lee Ken-cheng (李根政) and Chang Yu-ching (張育憬). IMHO all these leaders had unrealistic expectations of how their parties would do in the election from the beginning, and especially given the parties’ problems are structural more than personal (with the potential exception of Fan Yun, who proved to be a remarkably poor campaigner) the most important question now is how the next chairs are selected rather than who they are. Will the parties use democratic and procedural steps to choose a new leader, or will they make it up as they go along?

The most important resignation from a governmental standpoint would have to be that of Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) and his entire Cabinet this afternoon (link). This appears to be part of a futile attempt by Ma into goading Tsai to form a joint Cabinet with him the next four months, a diminution of presidential sovereignty that could come in handy at the end of Tsai’s term. Ma and Mao have been talking about the legislative majority being DPP (the new Legislature takes office in just a couple weeks) creating a mandate for a joint Cabinet, another diminution of the president that could also come in handy if the KMT can retake at least the Legislature at some point in the future. Tsai won’t go for any of this and questions the constitutionality of the plan. She wants Ma and his team to sit and wait for May. Complicating things is Mao seeming to insist he wants to leave when Ma is now open to keeping him (link) and media reports Ma’s been unable to contact Mao and Mao’s wife left Ma standing out in the cold when he visited the Mao home recently (link). Anyway, it seems Simon Chang (張善政) (whose Chinese first name literally means “good government”) will be the acting premier until this drama is settled by Ma deciding definitively whose resignations to accept or reject.

The most important position to be filled politically is that of KMT chair, and that’s the one I’m least sure will go in the right direction. The party’s byzantine rules are potentially restrictive yet also quite ambiguous, allowing for undemocratic deus ex machina like President Ma returning to power automatically, and what’s worse, the party’s electorate for chairman races is very different from the nation as a whole and even from the KMT support base itself.

The recent legislative elections proved that the party’s local Taiwanese faction base is alive and well: see the party’s relatively good showing in central Taiwan (and especially Nantou) last weekend, compared to the surprising defeats of waishengren princelings like Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) and Lee Ching-hua (李慶華). In fact, because the central and indigenous faction candidates did by far the best and the KMT party list was made so faction-heavy by Eric Chu, the Taiwanese faction of the KMT should control the party’s legislative caucus, which will soon be the KMT wing with the most governmental power. If things get ugly in the KMT the Taiwanese KMT could even combine with the pan-greens to approve constitutional referenda.

But the KMT chair electorate is dominated by deep blues such as the Huang Fu-hsing military veterans chapter, and loyalty to President Ma counts a lot to them. So it’s probable the next KMT chairman will be a deep blue alienated from the base of the KMT’s actual governing power. Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) would be the worst-case scenario (but the most entertaining). Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) seems to be the most likely to win because his father is grand old military man Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村), but Hau has the same problem of unfamiliarity with and distance from the local Taiwanese that Hung does, as evidenced by the way he cocked up the Keelung race by jumping into it and stirring the local factions there to support two different deep-blue insurgent candidates. He’s spent practically his whole life in Taipei.

Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) is by far the most popular KMT politician, and if the KMT chair were open to all citizens (or maybe even just all KMT voters) he would win and the KMT would begin to Taiwanize and move to the center. However, the deep blues and President Ma both hate Wang so he has no chance to win, and he knows it and won’t run.

I think the two best plausible choices for the KMT, given the limitations of its electorate, are former Taichung mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) and Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), and Ma would have to endorse one or the other to push him over Hau. Hu is a waishengren who can talk to the deep blues, but his decades in Taichung also give him understanding and ability to communicate with the local factions. Wu is a native Taiwanese with plenty of experience with Nantou and Kaohsiung factions to name two, and given his appointments as premier and then VP he seems to be the native Taiwanese most trusted by President Ma. Wu has been quiet about running (update: he’s now officially “thinking about it” after getting a recommendation (link)), and Hu has thrown his hat in the ring recently with the traditional KMT “other people say I’d be great for this job” talk. We’ll have to see whom President Ma decides on.

Lost in all this discussion is that in the interregnum before the assumed coming chair election (which could be as long as 3 months, taking up Ma’s time for the rest of his term), the KMT will have its first female chair, acting chair Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠) of Chiayi. She could very well be a better choice for chair than any of the “real” contenders, but like Hung Hsiu-chu her time in power will be cut short because she’s not considered royalty like the others.

