In January of this year, the Taiwanese voted in an historic election. Wait a minute, deng yi xia. Is historic too strong a word here? On the one hand, the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) was favored to win, and although the election was closer than in 2008, Ma rallied to victory once again. But on the other hand, this election was a milestone of sorts. For the first time in the island’s history, legislative elections were held simultaneously with the presidential election. Doesn’t sound like much of a deal. Then again, reform is just now taking shape. The electoral reform of today might be the legislative reshuffling of tomorrow.
Some background is in order. The democratic system of Taiwan is categorized as a semi-presidential system known as president-parliamentary. The government is akin to the US system, except in place of three government branches, Taiwan has five: the executive, legislative and judicial branches, accompanied by the Control Yuan (which monitors the government and investigates it in case of wrongdoing) and the Examination Yuan (which acts as a civil service commission). In Taiwan’s president-parliamentary system, there is a president, elected directly by the people, and a premier, who is the leader of the executive. The premier is the head of the Executive Yuan Council, which is in effect the official cabinet. The premier usually represents the majority party in the legislature and depends on the elected body’s confidence, but in Taiwan’s particular case, the president often appoints the premier. Because the executive has “separate origin and survival,” there can arise an occasion peculiar to semi-presidential systems, as opposed to strict parliamentary systems like the Westminster model, of divided government. The last (and only time) this occurred in Taiwan was after Chen Shui-bian of the DPP was elected president in 2000. He first appointed a premier from the rival KMT party, which controlled the legislature. However, this cordiality did not last, and Chen dismissed the KMT premier and filled the cabinet with members of his own party.
Although the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gained leadership in the executive for two straight terms between 2000-2008, the party has never seen a majority in the legislature. Opposition supporters have gradually eroded KMT dominance in the Legislative Yuan, but have not yet tipped the scale. For those hoping for change, electoral reform may indeed be the panacea. SNTV (single non-transferable vote) was used for legislative elections until 2008, when a change was made to an SMD (single member district) system that somewhat resembled the electoral changes made in Japan. Although legislative seats in Taiwan were chosen by SNTV, the executive was still decided by FPTP (first past the post), influencing election results such that the overall effect looked more like the two-party system that FPTP promotes. The 2008 SMD double-ballot system called for voters to choose a representative in their single-member electoral district as well as a political party, in the form of a PR list. Due to the 2012 combining of the legislative and executive elections, Taiwanese voters were given three ballots this past January: a vote for their district representative, a vote for their party preference, and a vote for the president.
Observers commended voters on using the new system to vote more strategically. James Soong, of the People’s First Party, seemed to be at the losing end of the new system, garnering a less-than-expected 2.77% vote share, whereas the Taiwan Solidarity Union (a pro-independent party) received an unanticipated 8.96% [David Huang, Academia Sinica]. However, calls for more electoral reform could be heard. Chief among them was a move from single-member to multi-member districts with vote allocation “ceilings” for dominant parties. It is clear from the critiques–coming from the DPP, TSU and other non-KMT parties–that addressing Kuomintang dominance of the legislature is a salient issue. The Taipei Times reported after the January election that over-representation was still a problem despite the reforms, citing a KMT-to-DPP seat dispersion in the legislature of 64 to 40, even though votes for the two main parties stood at 48.1% to 43.8% respectively.
What can we learn from electoral reform in other SNTV systems? Japan, which held its first election after reform in 1996, has since seen a decline in one-party dominance of the legislature. The once all-powerful Liberal Democratic Party has lost its majority to the Democratic Party of Japan, which controls the House of Representatives and holds the prime ministership. Can the opposition DPP efficiently use electoral reform to weaken the legislative might of the KMT? And is the very idea of electoral reform challenging to the KMT, given its grasp on power usually attributed to entrenched interests in the north of the country, interests that might see a proportional decline in representation once a more balanced electoral procedure is implemented and voters countrywide become more mature at strategically voting for the “best candidate”?
Only time will tell.
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