Big By-election in Taichung Area...not really

A K-town street.

UPDATE: Low turnout leads to close victory for KMT by a mere 1200 votes after Yen Sr. won by 39,000 the last time. Much better than I expected the DPP to do. But it also goes to show how Taiwanese bitch about political corruption, and then, when given the clear choice....

By-election in Taichung District 2 looks to be an easy KMT win though the DPP is pushing hard for votes..... the Taipei Times reports:

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) appears to be hoping that a conflict between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Yen Kuan-hen (顏寬恆) and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) could help it win tomorrow’s legislative by-election in Greater Taichung’s second electoral district.

Wait...what is the conflict the DPP hopes to exploit?

“Ma, who is the KMT’s chairman, has not campaigned for Yen, and Yen has not used the KMT’s logo during his campaign, nor has he emphasized that he represents the KMT,” DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said at a campaign stop in Greater Taichung.

...and the situation?

The DPP has promoted the by-election as a vote of no confidence in Ma’s governance in an apparent effort to neutralize the Yen family’s strong political presence in the electoral district, a traditional KMT stronghold which includes the districts of Shalu (沙鹿), Longjing (龍井), Wurih (烏日), Dadu (大肚), Wufeng (霧峰) and part of Dali (大里).

The Yen family is the family that runs the big Matsu procession that terminates at the Dajia temple (Check out this informative post from two years ago). Its patriarch Yen Ching-piao himself is a former KMTer who parted ways with the KMT because he was... umm.... too colorful. In reality he's independent of the KMT in the sense that the Byelorussian SSR was independent of the USSR, as I noted before. Yen Sr. is reliably pro-KMT and pan-Blue and Yen Jr. is running as a KMT politician. Yen is probably the most representative local politician in Taiwan, making a fortune from gravel operations, running a powerful political patronage empire, with tight links to the ruling party, and also cultivating links to China through religious and business links. I've noted on several occasions that one of the most important beneficiaries of the burgeoning cross-strait relationship is cross-strait organized crime. Actually I don't even know why I wrote that last sentence. It has nothing to do with the rest of the paragraph. Did I mention that Ma hilariously appointed Yen Sr. the Administration's ECFA spokesman?

But anyway, the Yen family comprises one of the most powerful political patronage networks on the island. They are solidly behind the son. The dearth of Ma and other senior figures is probably not indicative of any split, but rather is more likely a wish to avoid calling undue attention to the KMT's deep and abiding involvement with...colorful local figures (like Ma's secretary planning major gangster funerals here or the massive wedding of Yen Ching-piao's son attended by KMT bigshots here/here), or even more likely, the Yen family's lock on Taichung 2 is so strong that bringing out the big guns isn't necessary. As Frozen Garlic noted a while back:

There are two interesting stories.  Most of the attention will be on the contest to fill the empty Taichung 2 seat, so let’s start with that one.  The Taichung 2 district boundaries were drawn specifically for Yen Ching-piao.  His best town, Shalu, was put into Taichung 2 with the rest of his base instead of Taichung 1.  This created a bit of a population imbalance as well as a political imbalance, since the blue camp is quite a bit stronger in Taichung 2 than Taichung 1 and Shalu, where the KMT is particularly strong, exacerbates the difference.[1]  In fact, Taichung 2 is easily the blue camp’s strongest district in the old Taichung County.

I don't give the DPP much of a shot here to win. I think they can best hope to play the better-than-expected card when it's all over.
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Daily Links:

• Movies of life in Taiwan from the 1950s
• China Post commentary argues that KMT is headed for dismal showing in next local elections and so no one wants to challenge Ma for Chairmanship.
• Genetic studies show powerful evidence that Polynesian explorers brought the sweet potato from South America back to Polynesia. Thor Heyerdahl lives!
• Taiwan and China National Palace Museums to do exchange?
• Chinese tourist quotas to be raised. "On the evening of January 22, the Tourism Bureau announced that the quota on Mainland tour groups would be increased from 4,000 to 5,000 per day, while the quota on Mainland individual tourists would be increased from 1,000 to 2,000 per day."

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Ad Ed Value

Photographed this interesting political ad in eastern Fengyuan town today. The ad is for Wang Chao-kun ("王朝坤"), the KMT candidate for the new Taichung City Council for Fengyuan and Houli. Those towns are north of Taichung city. The poster caught my eye because the candidate's shirt reads "MAZU", the popular local Goddess, and if you look carefully in the upper left corner of the poster, you can see a Mazu logo there.

A quick search took me to this page where he is listed (as Wang Tsao-kun) as one of the Directors of the Dajia Matsu Temple, the most important on the island. That temple is run by the notorious Yen Ching-piao, who has been in and out of jail and who is widely reputed to be a powerful gangster. He is President of the temple association. Wang Chao-kun is apparently one of Yen's men. He is currently speaker of the Houli Township Council. If you run searches on that list of names you'll soon run across other local politicians.

Just another example of how religion and politics intertwine in Taiwan through the temple associations, which provide a nexus for local businessmen, politicians, and local "colorful characters", and also, of the influence of that particular temple association in the local politics of the northern Taichung area. Temple associations are good launching pads for local political careers, and the subdued use of the Goddess Mazu on the sign tells locals what kind of politician they are getting.....
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Gangsters and Politics from AP

Deb Wu of AP turned in a doozy of a piece on criminals in Taiwan's local politics this week that was featured in both the Taipei Times and the Taiwan News (a more permanent link is at Yahoo News). Since the latter has the longer and richer formulation of it, I'll grab an excerpt from there, but be sure to read the whole thing, it is outstanding:

Taiwan expert Bruce Jacobs of Australia's Monash University says gangster governance is an important part of Taiwan's political glue, without which many people would lose a shot at fair treatment in what has long been a rigidly hierarchical society.

"They are providing services, and that creates respect within the community," he said.

Criminals rose to prominence in politics in the late 1980s, and their influence peaked in the mid-1990s, when a third of county and municipal councilors had criminal backgrounds, according to then Justice Minister Liao Cheng-hao. They included the legislative speaker in Pingtung county, Cheng Tai-chi, who was later executed in 2000 for gunning down a gambling den competitor six years earlier.

Today, the proportion in county legislatures has dropped to 15 to 30 percent, estimates political scientist Chao Yung-mao of National Taiwan University in Taipei. That's still large enough to have a major impact on local politics, he said.

"Gangster deputies demand that government officials give priority to projects in their constituencies or help arrange temporary jobs in the government for their supporters," Chao said. "They warn officials about 'consequences' if their wishes go unfulfilled."

Their names are widely known in Taiwan. People like Tainan county legislative speaker Wu Chien-bao, recently indicted for bribing professional baseball players. Or Nantou county power broker Chiang Chin-liang, whose murder and extortion convictions in the 1980s raised embarrassing questions for Wu Den-yih, now Taiwan's premier, after it was reported that Chiang had accompanied him on a trip to Indonesia in 2008.

The piece focuses on Yen Ching-piao, the gold standard for criminals in politics, who in his own self unites all the strands of political power in Taiwan -- influence over local temple associations, construction and gravel industry control, local political clout, organized crime, and close links to the KMT. The article goes on to give one of the most common explanations for the tight links between local gangsters and the KMT:

Wang Yeh-lih, another National Taiwan University political scientist, said that gangster governance in Taiwanese counties evolved from deals that then President Lee Teng-hui cut with criminal elements in the late 1980s.

At the time, Wang said, Lee needed a strong counterweight to influential elders in his Nationalist Party, who were trying to maintain the political dominance of the so-called "mainlander" faction _ people who had fled to Taiwan in 1949 when Mao Zedong's Communists defeated Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists in the Chinese civil war.

Lee himself was a native Taiwanese _ the descendent of families who had come to the island from the Chinese mainland in the 17th and 18th centuries _ and to neutralize the mainlander faction, said Wang, Lee "nominated many native Taiwanese gangsters to run in regional elections and for positions in the party's decision-making body."

It is common to blame Lee Teng-hui for the incorporation of gangsters into the KMT as local candidates, but the reality is that the KMT had been intimately involved with the local factions -- which are closely gang-connected -- since day 1. My background piece on irrigation associations and local politics has a number of quotes of how the farmer's associations were corrupted in the 1970s and became the power bases of local politicians, who, by the 1980s, were spending as much as US senate elections to gain the posts. Read the quote on vote brokers. Recall also that in 1984 gangsters under KMT government control killed author Henry Liu in the US.

But more: an article in Taiwan's Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition by Huang Teh-fu has a rundown on the statistics of the KMT's involvement in the local factions, which are heavily involved in all sorts of organized crime. It notes:

"How close was the relationship between the KMT and the local factions in these elections? In elections from 1954 to 1989, the average representation of factional candidates among all KMT candidates in Taiwan Provincial Assembly elections was 60.7%... Between 1954 and 1989, the factional representation of the KMT never dipped below 50%."

In other words, if Lee really was picking local gangsters for legislative posts, he was merely following an old trend. But the reality was that the trend of increasing factional influence was bottom up, not top-down. The KMT began its rule in Taiwan as an alien and unpopular colonial regime heavily dependent on local factions to sustain its rule. Over time this evolved into a mutually beneficial relationship -- the KMT arbitrated between factions, sometimes to the point of rotating seats between competing factions in the same area, and sent down resources to the local faction networks for distribution to help them maintain power, and in return its power at the national level -- the power of mainlander faction at its core -- went unchallenged. An important component of this KMT policy was that factions were not allowed to operate on the national scale -- no faction could operate across county lines, and local Taiwanese politicians could have only local-level posts in the KMT Party heirarchy. This ensured that no politician could acquire an independent power base big enough to operate at the national level and challenge the mainlander power structure. Divide and rule at the local level....

However, as Chen Ming-tong relates in a paper on local factions in Taiwan's Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition, after Chiang Ching-guo died the local factions, who had been increasing in power since Chiang himself accelerated Taiwanization -- bring native Taiwanese into the KMT at increasingly higher levels -- began forming groups to operate across regional boundaries. Chen writes:

"After Chiang's death, local factions made a series of nationwide coalition moves aimed at undermining the KMT's domination over central government agencies. Such moves included the establishment of the Wisdom Club, the emergence of the DC club, and the Yi Lan Conference prior to the KMT's thirteenth national conference in 1988, in which the speakers and vice speakers of 21 cities and counties demanded more political power from central authorities."

Chen reports that in the 1992 Legislative Yuan election Lee nominated the highest proportion of factional candidates ever, 59%, a figure not exactly out of proportion to the importance of local factions in KMT politics. The DPP responded by claiming this was pure money politics -- which it was -- but it was also recognition of the evolving power of the factions within the KMT and their thrust for national prominence. In the 1992 elections the KMT took a beating, apparently for corruption, and consequently, in the next round of city and council elections, under Lee Teng-hui the party fielded the lowest proportion of faction candidates ever in such an election, 42%. The KMT got thumped anyway.

In other words, Lee accepted a situation of increasing local factional power he was handed, and ran with it. He was capable of nominating lots of local faction politicians, or few, as the case demanded. Involvement of local organized crime/factions in KMT politics is an old, not a new situation. The claim that Lee "nominated many native Taiwanese gangsters to run in regional elections and for positions in the party's decision-making body" with the implication that this number was somehow a disproportion or something totally new that caused a new social trend is completely false.

I can't resist pointing out one more thing. At this point in time, in the early 1990s, Lee's Minister of Justice was one Ma Ying-jeou, who was carrying out a crackdown on corrupt local politicians that earned him much enmity in the 1990s. Lee eventually removed him from that post. Now that you understand the role of faction politicians in the KMT of that period, their rising power after the death of Chiang, and their importance to the KMT grip on Taiwan, ask yourself whether Ma was earnestly trying to clean things up, or whether he was simplying carrying out the old KMT policy of suppressing local factions attempting to operate at the national level, by jailing them for corruption, with the added bonus of knocking out Lee supporters. And then look at the current program of attacking DPP politicians for "corruption" under the Ma Administration, and ask yourself if it is just a case of, as far as political strategies go, plus ca change...
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A Yen for ECFA

The last couple of weeks have been crowded with stuff, but I couldn't let this gem of a story pass unnoticed. On Jan 5 local papers carried the tale that Yen Ching-piao, the longtime...er...politician from Taichung County, had been appointed the local spokesman for ECFA at the suggestion of KMT legislators. The China Post has the call:

Independent legislator Yen Ching-piao has agreed to help the government with its efforts to convince the public of the necessity of its planned signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China and outline the negative impact on Taiwan if the pact is not signed.

Yen agreed to take up the role as an ECFA spokesman following a meeting with Economic Affairs Minister Shih Yen-shiang, Bureau of Foreign Trade Director-General Huang Chih-peng and Industrial Development Bureau Director General Woody T.J. Duh yesterday.

Yen proclaimed that he accepted the job not for the sake of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) “but for Taiwan's future generations.”

Yen will appear in TV commercials designed to sell the proposed economic deal with China to the mass population in a bid to defuse the negative campaign mounted by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party that accuses the government of President Ma Ying-jeou of attempting to sell out Taiwan via the ECFA.

Yen will use straightforward language that will enable citizens to understand why the deal is so important to Taiwan, Huang said.

The China Post leaves out Yen's illustrious career as a hardened criminal, revolving between public office and a private cell. Yen, who came up through the KMT following the gravel firm owner to county councilor to legislator career path, eventually had to leave and join the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union (NPSU), a sort of catch-all party for local faction politicians. He's independent of the KMT in the sense that the Byelorussian SSR was independent of the USSR. It boogles the imagination to understand what language Yen is expected to use that will suddenly swing everyone over to support of ECFA.

More important, though, is the role that the China Post briefly mentions at the end of the article:

But he also serves as chairman of the board of trustees of Chenlang-gong (Wave-Suppressing Palace) at Tajia, Taiwan's most popular temple dedicated to Matsu, the Goddess of the Seas.

It's Yen who presides over the annual Matsu pilgrimage, one of the largest religious processions in the world. The connections between local factions, religion, and cross-strait relations suddenly loom...readers may recall that Yen associate Cheng Ming-kun, head of the Taiwan Matsu Association, was in Beijing in July meeting Chen Yunlin, the PRC negotiator who then came to Taichung in December. Chen Yunlin returned the favor by visiting the Chenlan (Matsu) Temple in Dajia during his trip to Taiwan (my post). None of this interplay between the CCP and "local factions" made the international media (goes without saying!) but an obvious inference is that Yen's control of Matsu, a goddess venerated on both sides of the Strait, may well be used in promoting ECFA, and more generally, cross-strait closeness. Religion is deeply intertwined with politics in Taiwan....

...I'm sure the alert reader can work out who the likely beneficiaries of cross-strait closeness are, as far as organized crime is concerned. Sooner or later the dawning realization is going to sweep across Taiwan's local faction politicians that they are going to be muscled out of the shiny new China future by their big bad counterparts from across the Strait. Local KMT politicians are already publicly complaining that the new closeness to China isn't bringing their districts the money that was promised....KMT internal tensions can only grow over time.

The Taipei Times also identified another issue with Yen: the subtle class-based slam of Taiwanese as low class, betel-nut chewing goobers. To wit:

Yen, a convicted criminal with a large grassroots support base, is known for his affability, and there’s no doubt he would speak the language of the “ordinary person” while chewing betel nut and mingling with the public.

Underneath the praise heaped on him by government officials, however, is a disturbing message: If you support an ECFA, you will graduate from “local” to “high-class.”

It appears the government has continued with the illusion that people opposed to an ECFA are those with little education or low social status.

This disturbing attitude brings back the unpleasant memory of two comic strip characters that the ministry created last year that were both offensive and derogatory.

This government just never learns. Or could it be that it is so arrogant that it is unaware its actions fuel perceptions of social superiority?

Many will recall the furor over the comic strip introduced in July to promote an ECFA. The cartoon featured two stereotypical characters, Yi-ge (一哥), a middle-aged ethnic Taiwanese man who speaks “Taiwanese Mandarin” and opposes the ECFA, and Fa-sao (發嫂), a sharp-minded Hakka career woman with a dashing educational background who supports the deal.

As the Taipei Times notes in its editorial, the problem is not that the government hasn't communicated well with the public, but that no one knows what ECFA is. Without substance, communication is basically useless. Although I have to admit that the use of a convicted criminal as a spokesman for ECFA contains a deep, unintentional truth about the nature of the agreement....
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