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Updated Thursday, October 1, 2009 9:19 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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The Kuomintang's real crisis

When that opportune time comes, the opposition will try to further weaken President Ma, who has been greatly weakened by the indecisiveness displayed in handling relief efforts in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot and will double as Kuomintang chairman on October 17, by initiating the motion for his recall that may have no chance of success whatsoever but may lead to its victory in all-important local elections at the end of this year.

Voters will go to the polls on December 5 to elect 17 magistrates and mayors across the country.

　　Candidates have to complete registration with the local election commissions between October 5 and 9. One of the Kuomintang nominees, Chang Li-shan, announced her withdrawal from the magistracy election in Yunlin on Monday.

　　A younger sister of Yunlin's political boss, Chang Li-shan complained both her brother and her had been maligned while they were campaigning for the Kuomintang nominee, who lost Saturday's by-election. The Kuomintang, which fielded Chang Keng-hui, attributed his loss to the splitting of voter support caused by Chang Hui-yuan, who bolted the party to run for the seat vacated by his disqualified legislator son Chang Suo-wen. The unsuccessful independent candidate, like Chang Yung-wei who is the brother of the Kuomintang's nominee for magistrate of Yunlin, is a powerful local political boss. As a matter of fact, Chang Yung-wei was fired as magistrate of the southern Taiwan county after he had been convicted of corruption and sentenced to one year in prison. He served the sentence.

The two local bosses fell out, and Chang Li-shan had to withdraw from the December race, knowing full well that she stands no chance of beating incumbent Democratic Progressive Party magistrate Su Chih-fen of Yunlin. Liu won over 70,000 votes, far more than what the two Changs collected between them.

Liu's landslide victory signals an end to the Kuomintang election machine that relied on local bosses for mustering voter support. President Ma wants party reform. He refused to nominate a local boss convicted of insider trading, Fu Kun-chi, for magistrate of Hualien and picked his clean confidante Yeh Chin-chuan to run in the primaries for that post. Yeh, who had quit as minister of health to run, was routed, while Fu is determined to run and win. Ma did not name another local boss for a legislative by-election in Miaoli. Kang Shih-ju bolted the Kuomintang to run and won the Miaoli by-election. Ma's elitism has all but totally alienated local political bosses.

That is the real crisis that Ma's Kuomintang is now facing. He is trying to destroy its election machine, while his government is struggling vainly to show a track record that may pacify the discontented electorate.

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