The DPP’s Disunity Will Kill Them

These few weeks are going to test Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), threatening party unity going into a crucial election season. The party’s legislative caucus is trying to pass a court-mandated law on marriage equality, a social issue which the party is ill-equipped and not structured to handle. Lurking in the background of the battles in the legislature is an unprecedented primary challenge from within the party against their incumbent Tsai Ing-wen in a contest over an issue as old as the party.

The court mandated deadline for the marriage equality law is May 24, and the public polling that will determine the presidential nominee will take place the week following. The first hurdle the party must survive is passing the law, which is proving very contentious. The cracks that are appearing now may be further widened in the aftermath of the primary–especially if the poll results are very close and the losing side considers the nominee illegitimate.

DPP shooting itself in the foot

The DPP was founded in the mid 1980s to fight against the then effectively one-party Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) state during the martial law era. By the early 1990s localist Taiwanese nationalism came to the foreground as the second defining feature of the party. To this day, defeating the KMT and removing all vestiges of the martial law era and Taiwanese nationalism remain the unifying elements of the party.

In 2016, the party won the presidency and a legislative majority, for the first time in history. As the DPP expected, actual governing is very different than being the perennial opposition, and it comes with responsibilities and challenges the party had never faced before.

The DPP and the KMT are not split neatly along traditional Western style left versus right political differences. The only sure cleavage lines are that the KMT is consistently more China-friendly and more Chinese culturally, and the DPP is more pro-Taiwan politically and culturally.

The DPP brass and media commentators seem more concerned on the party unity front over the presidential primary challenge of former Premier William Lai. The division between the two is largely between two camps that are both strongly pro-Taiwan, but disagree on how to go about promoting it. Having been a contentious issue since the early days of the party, it is unsurprising that the party is focused on this issue.

In essence, William Lai is perceived as promoting a more muscular, forceful Taiwanese nationalism–though in practice not much distinguishes his public stance from the president’s. Some of his reputation may be projected on him as contrast to the president’s soft spoken style, or due to some members distrust of “single women” as one prominent–and failed–critic of Tsai puts it.

Lai supporters believe Lai is the better candidate to promote changing the nation’s name officially to the Republic of Taiwan, in spite of him never calling for such a thing officially. President Tsai is known to have a softer stance, defending the independence of the nation but are willing to keep the name “Republic of China” to avoid a war with China, which has made clear it will take military action against “Taiwan separatists.” President Tsai and top party brass delayed, and delayed again the primary, in order to try and negotiate with Lai; Lai’s supporters claim that Tsai is doing everything she can to game the system because early media polling showed Lai with a substantial lead. Tsai’s supporters are upset with Lai not only breaking with tradition and challenging a party incumbent, especially as Lai had stated he would stand by Tsai in the 2020 race and not run against her. There is bad blood on both sides, leaving potential for acrimony no matter who wins.

Even united, the DPP is not built to tackle pressing issues

However, it probably isn’t the battles over traditional issues–which the party has survived before–which should concern the DPP: It is the issues the party isn’t structured to cope with in the first place. The administration’s most dramatic missteps have been on issues like labour policy and marriage equality that have little or nothing to do with the issues of battling the KMT, or removing vestiges of martial law, or building Taiwan nationhood, that the party was founded on to tackle.

Being neither a left or right wing party in the Western sense, the DPP is totally inconsistent on these issues–reflecting the diverse makeup of the party and their supporters. While an old farmer in the south and a college student in Taipei that marched in the Sunflower protests in 2014 against closer trade ties to China likely broadly agree on their view of the KMT, democracy, the threat of China and have strong pro-Taiwan views, they might be a million miles apart on formulas for calculating overtime pay and welcoming gay couples into the family or teaching gender fluidity in schools.

So far the party’s inability to cope with these issues has been painful to behold, and in the case of marriage equality, an unmitigated disaster that has accomplished the remarkable feat of both galvanizing the opposition to mobilize on a mass scale against the DPP and turning off the the supporters of marriage equality in disgust. For an in-depth look at how the DPP managed to turn off everyone on all sides of the issue and take a brutal beating in the polls in the 2018 election (in part on this issue), read this article.

In short, starting with then candidate Tsai in 2015 coming out in support of marriage equality, the image has been that the DPP was for marriage equality among the public at large and among opponents. However, soon after her statement, she began backtracking, noting it was a personal view, and she wasn’t speaking for the party (of which she was Chair of at the time). Once in office, the issue was dropping and only revived under heavy pressure–only to be dropped once again. With much obfuscation, misdirection and ignoring the issue the party was able to largely keep it off the agenda, infuriating supporters who had expected upon taking office the DPP was going to pass marriage equality. It became clear the party had no interest in doing so.

However, the courts ruled in favour, and set a two year deadline for the legislature to pass appropriate legislation by May 24. The DPP had a golden political opportunity to “get out of jail free” by quickly passing a law, and for those legislators whose constituents were opposed–they could blame it on the courts, “we had to do it”. They passed on that opportunity, and after William Lai became premier and suggested it was back on the table, it was once again buried–carrying it into the campaign for the 2018 local elections. Opponents mobilized to fight the DPP and put referendums on the ballot, that they won, making the task for the DPP considerably more complicated–and in part helping to deliver a landslide victory to the KMT, which on the issue merely had to campaign as “not DPP” to get these voters.

Still the DPP procrastinated, only finally coming up with a bill in late February. It chewed through the legislature slowly, with it and two other bills finally passing a second reading in early May. As of the writing of this article on May 14, the DPP is attempting to negotiate a compromise bill from the three that have passed second reading on the floor of the legislature.

None of the bills fully meets the court’s requirements for full marriage equality. The bill proposed by the DPP administration comes the closest, specifying the relationship as “marriage”, but limits marriages when involving a foreign national whose home country doesn’t allow same sex marriage, and also only allows for the adoption of the biological children of the other, but not their non-biological ones. The other two bills were proposed by a KMT legislator and another by a DPP legislator, and both are civil union draft proposals. The one proposed by the DPP lawmaker includes a clause which allows family members or relatives, within three degrees of kinship from either side, to request an annulment of a union under the pretext of preventing “sham unions”.

While the DPP speaker of the house has attempted to negotiate, the KMT lawmaker has forced his bill to either stand as is or not at all. The DPP lawmaker who proposed the other bill hasn’t shown up at the legislature. DPP legislators have been proposing over the last week to hold an unprecedented secret ballot, and there are conflicting reports on whether the party will allow individual lawmakers to vote freely, or force the party line on one bill. Some DPP legislators are openly for the bill–mostly “party list” lawmakers appointed to their seats–and some are openly against. The media has been full of reports of lawmakers previously for marriage equality now moving against under pressure from their constituents. Others have done everything they could to avoid taking any stand at all. Adding to the confusion, a Tsai administration’s minister noted that the constitutional court’s ruling only commented on marriage and related laws, adding that does not protect the right of same-sex couples to have children and suggested that such a controversial issue is better dealt with incrementally.

Marriage equality today, or not?  

The DPP is hoping to have a bill passed by today, one week prior to the May 24 deadline. The necessary systems, including computer household registrations systems, are not yet in place to handle same sex couples, and no provisions have been made public on how to educate and prepare hospitals, lawyers, emergency workers, household registrars, or any of the other people, companies, agencies and institutions that will be on the front lines of implementing the changes.

In short, in the very best case scenario, they will have a law passed and will have one week to prepare the entire nation. In practice it is looking quite likely that they will delay into next week, or simply fail to pass any law at all. For some marriage equality supporters, a total failure on the part of the DPP to pass a law would be preferable on the assumption that that the court ruling will automatically go into effect. While that is theoretically true, it doesn’t answer the questions of how and in what way “marriage equality” will be implemented. If the forms still require a male and female, how does the court ruling fix that? Since children were not specifically mentioned, does adoption come under the court ruling…or not?

If the prospect of administrative chaos isn’t bad enough, even the “cleanest” of the laws is still far from being a full marriage equality bill, and will likely be tied up in the courts again as a result. If a compromise bill is passed with elements from the other bill or bills, there will be significantly more court challenges. If no law is passed, confusion on how to implement and the lack of systems in place will no doubt lead to more court challenges.

This is the sort of chaos and confusion that can tear a party apart. Obviously this is not specific to marriage equality (other issues also divide the party) nor is it specific to the DPP (the KMT has divisive issues as well) nor even to Taiwan (the Conservatives in the UK come to mind over Brexit)–but the DPP is clearly unprepared to handle this sort of issue that falls outside of the party’s overarching original purposes. The KMT in the short term has, and will likely, benefit from this weakness in the DPP–but the KMT has their own internal problems that will plague them in this coming election season.

The next few weeks are going to be dramatic and consequential for the DPP. If they come through unified and working towards more internal consensus on issues outside of their traditional scope, the party could come out stronger and more dynamic in the run up to the January 2020 elections. Or they won’t. While it is possible, it is unlikely that the DPP will split apart before the 2020 election, but it is a distinct possibility going in the years to come if issues like this keep splitting the party. The KMT has spun off three major parties in past, it may yet happen to the DPP.

(Feature photo by William Yang)