US embassy cable - 04TAIPEI3299

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 TAIPEI 003299 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE PASS AIT/W 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/20/2014 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, TW 
SUBJECT: THE KMT'S LY ELECTION NON-STRATEGY 
 
REF: A. TAIPEI 03031 
     B. TAIPEI 03234 
 
Classified By: AIT Director Douglas Paal, Reasons: 1.4 (B/D) 
 
1. (C) Summary:  With just over a month to go before the 
December 11 Legislative Yuan (LY) election, the KMT is close 
to abandoning efforts to formulate a coherent, coordinated 
strategy for retaining its current LY majority.  The KMT 
failed to enforce discipline during the nomination process, 
and party officials do not expect compliance with planned 
coordinated voting distribution system.  An aborted 
eleventh-hour attempt to merge the KMT and People First Party 
(PFP) has deepened existing distrust within the Blue camp. 
The lack of a consensus on major policy issues means that the 
Pan-Blue leadership is even less capable of responding to 
Pan-Green attacks than they were during the presidential 
election campaign.  Nevertheless, many individual KMT LY 
candidates are confident that their strong grassroots bases, 
and crumbling PFP support, will ensure them victory on 
December 11.  End Summary. 
 
Divided We Stand 
---------------- 
 
2. (C) The KMT has largely abandoned an attempt to formulate 
a unified campaign for the December 11 LY election.  Party 
officials have tried to put a positive spin on the problem, 
noting the local focus of LY campaigns.  KMT Overseas Affairs 
Director Ho Szu-yin told AIT that in LY elections, "all 
politics is local," and individuals rely on their personal 
qualifications and community connections.  Soochow University 
Political Science Professor and informal KMT advisor Emile 
Sheng asserted that a coordinated island-wide campaign would 
only move the vote by three percentage points in any case. 
KMT Organizational Development Deputy Chairman Elton Liou 
told AIT that since June he has been visiting local KMT 
organizations to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each 
LY candidate and found most candidates uninterested in help 
from Taipei HQ.  Liou asserted that this was natural, since 
most KMT LY members rely on their own relationships and 
connections to secure re-election.  Compared to a 
presidential or magistrate election, he continued, the 
central organization has less of a role to play in LY 
campaigns. 
 
3. (C) Nevertheless, political observers emphasize that in 
Taiwan's multi-member district system, party headquarters do 
play a number of critical roles.  Perhaps none is more 
important than ensuring the nomination of a correct number of 
candidates.  While the PFP remained conservative in its 
nomination numbers, the KMT nominated about 40 percent more 
than the number of its incumbents.  Moreover, many party 
members who did not win party nomination have launched 
independent campaigns.  Elton Liou said that little could be 
done about the problem.  "This is the KMT, this is our 
tradition," he sighed.  Liou said the biggest difference 
between the DPP and KMT is that "KMT members always think 
they do not derive their power from the party."  KMT 
officials are equally pessimistic over their ability to 
enforce a coordinated voting distribution strategy (peipiao). 
 Ho Szu-yin told AIT that psychologically it is very 
difficult to ask voters not to cast a vote for the candidate 
of their choice, even if it is for the good of the party as a 
whole.  Former Organizational Development Chairman Ting 
Shou-chung said that "peipiao" might work in northern urban 
areas but local factions in central and southern Taiwan have 
their own ideas on who they want to support. 
 
Three Issue That Could Undo the Blue 
------------------------------------ 
 
4. (C) Despite the emphasis on local campaigns, some in the 
KMT say there are national issues that could affect the 
Pan-Blue's election prospects.  KMT Legislator (Taipei South) 
Apollo Chen (Shei-sheng) told AIT that, in a September 
meeting with KMT Chairman Lien Chan, he outlined three issues 
that the party must handle successfully in order to remain 
competitive in the year-end election -- the KMT-PFP merger, 
the November 4 court decision on the presidential election 
challenge, and the December 10 commemoration of the Formosa 
Incident (marking the anniversary of the KMT government's 
1979 crackdown on an opposition magazine run by senior 
members of the current administration).  Since Chen's 
warning, the Pan-Blue has already dropped the ball on the 
first issue.  A very public KMT attempt in the final days of 
the registration period to bully the PFP into accepting a 
merger has only increased animosity between the two parties 
and further hindered cooperation (Ref A).  While both sides 
have tried to bury the hatchet, the issue continues to 
fester.  Despite a renewed call for immediate merger last 
week by PFP legislators from central and southern Taiwan, few 
observers believe that a merger can be realized before the 
election. 
 
5. (C) The courts are not expected to rule on the first of 
the two March 20 election-related cases until November 4, but 
the KMT is already showing signs of fumbling that issue in 
the form of its "Truth Investigation Commission" created by 
Pan-Blue legislators in August.  KMT moderates complain that 
the leadership's continued focus on the last election has 
distracted the party from adequately planning for the next 
one and alienated centrist voters who likely regard the 
Pan-Blue protest as "sour grapes."  KMT Taipei City Councilor 
Chen Yu-mei bemoaned to AIT that during a recent meeting with 
Lien Chan, the Chairman took a full hour complaining about 
March 20, but did not make even a single mention of the LY 
election.  Lien and other top KMT officials continue to see 
all politics through the lens of March 20, without reference 
to political realities.  When asked by AIT in early October 
what the Pan-Blue election strategy would be, KMT LY 
President Wang Jin-Pyng replied "the Truth Investigation 
Commission."  When pressed to elaborate on how exactly this 
would help the KMT's LY prospects, Wang thought about it and 
said, "actually it really is a DPP issue." 
 
6. (C) Apollo Chen's third issue, "the Formosa Incident," 
represents a more generalized fear that the Pan-Blue will 
fall into the same nationalism trap the Pan-Green set for 
them during the last election (Ref B).  Chen told AIT that he 
specifically warned Lien not to let the PFP trick him into 
making sour and sarcastic remarks before the December 10 
anniversary of the incident.  Chen asserted that this would 
only alienate the majority of ethnic Taiwanese KMT supporters 
and boost the PFP among the minority ethnic Mainlanders. 
Confident that the current leadership can not win on the 
issue, many light Blue candidates are themselves trying to 
avoid anything related to Taiwan nationalism.  The KMT's 
Ting, who is running in Taipei's North District, told AIT he 
will simply focus on non-sensitive issues like the economy, a 
volunteer army, and stability.  However, other candidates, 
such as PFP Legislators Lin Yu-fang and Sheu Yuan-kuo, are 
actively campaigning against issues like the USD 18 billion 
defense procurement budget as part of their appeal to deep 
Blue voters in Taipei City.  As with the Formosa Incident, 
KMT moderates fear that the PFP's posturing on the defense 
budget will leave the entire Pan-Blue camp vulnerable to 
charges of selling out to Beijing. 
 
Herding Cats 
------------ 
 
7. (C) KMT's Elton Liou told AIT that there is a recognition 
that the Pan-Blue needs to at least respond to DPP attacks 
during the campaign, but they have not yet reached a 
consensus on how.  Liou noted that the party has identified 
the Truth Commission, party assets, and the KMT's 
passive-aggressive stance on the special defense procurement 
budget as key vulnerabilities, but internal divisions have 
made it impossible to craft a coherent response.  After 
arguing for hours on the problem, Liou said the only thing 
the KMT could agree upon was to adopt the ambiguous slogan 
"Make things right."  Personality clashes and personnel 
reshuffles are compounding the KMT's woes.  Su Chi, an 
influential Lien advisor, angrily quit the party's think tank 
after being denied a "safe" seat on the KMT's proportional 
candidate list.  On October 18, another key player in the 
discussion, KMT Legislator and party Spokesman Alex Tsai, was 
summarily fired over a still obscure spat with a scion of the 
Chiang dynasty. 
 
Comment: Incompetence is Relative 
--------------------------------- 
 
8. (C) If we needed proof that the KMT has changed over the 
last four years, this campaign provides it.  First, the KMT 
has abandoned the centralized bureaucratic organization that 
was key to past electoral victories.  The KMT created the 
peipiao voter allocation system.  Now the KMT says it cannot 
enforce this system among its supporters.  Second, the party 
that build the ROC military and took considerable pride in 
cultivating an image of defenders of freedom now campaigns 
against funding defense. 
 
9. (C) This is the situation that many KMT legislators feared 
in the aftermath of March 20 when the party leadership 
diverted all their attention and resources to fighting the 
presidential election outcome.  Despite the chaos in the 
central headquarters, the KMT is not expecting a train wreck. 
 Individual candidates in both northern and southern Taiwan 
are polling well in their districts, and confident of their 
own victory.  This stems in large part from the fact that, 
compared to the PFP (Septel), the KMT is a model of cohesion 
and unity.  Most KMT candidates are optimistic that their 
individual strengths, and the PFP's weaknesses, will allow 
the KMT as a party to come out of the election at least as 
strong as it started. 
PAAL