Chewin in the Chung

The KMT's Sad Requiem

It was beautiful! Despite the rain and chilly weather, loyal followers of the Kuomintang (KMT) and People's First Party (PFP) some 400-500,00 strong took to the streets on March 27th and marched proudly in protest to the Presidential Palace.

It was beautiful! Young, old, people of all ages came with one message, "Democracy was dead." Re-elected President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had cheated. He had rigged the election with a fake assassination attempt in the closing moments. There could be no other explanation.

It was beautiful! Crimson ROC flags with their 12-pointed white sun on a blue background waved in abundance. Songs were sung. The KMT and PFP heavyweights spoke with passion. Speeches poured forth denouncing Chen and declaring the KMT and PFP the rightful winners. With no other proof but their hatred, the speakers demanded the presidency be given to its rightful heirs. So went the speeches, speeches that had an all too familiar ring.

It was beautiful, beautiful, yes so beautiful but yet, for a person with a sense of history so sad! Sad, how so? How could such a glorious protest, such joy and such vigor be so sad? How could the faith of so many true believers be anything but sad? Yet it was.

It was sad because once again, the sincere idealistic followers of the KMT had been cheated, cheated not by Chen Shui-bian, but by their own leaders. The speeches coming from Lien Chan and James Soong on down to hired gun Sisy Chen told it all. These negative vitriolic speeches had been going on throughout the campaign; these speeches avoided any
issues; they spoke only of entitlement. They were accusatory speeches that were remarkably callous especially on the night of the assassination attempt. They were unfortunately speeches with an all too familiar ring and an all too familiar sadness of deja-vu.

Not too long ago, other KMT leaders had made similar speeches. Standing on the shores of Taiwan and pointing to the
Mainland, Chiang Kai-shek told his loyal followers to have faith. They would retake the Mainland. The victory of Mao Tse-tung was temporary. Mao had cheated. He had deceived the people. The KMT had not lost the hearts of the people on the Mainland because of their corruption and self-serving ineptitude. No, they had lost because the lying Mao had cheated.

Unwilling to face a needed and rigorous self-examination, the KMT leaders lashed out at Mao and the Communists. Unwilling to undergo self-scrutiny they ignored the voices of reform within their own party. Instead, secure with money and property in the United States, Switzerland and elsewhere, they could rail that the fault was not their own. Mao had cheated. There could be no other explanation.

So Chiang Kai-shek spoke and so the many KMT followers unquestioningly listened and believed him. All over the island, they erected statues of the Generalissimo seated on his horse poised to retake the Mainland. Unwilling to see the hand writing on the wall, it would take 40 years before Chiang's loyal followers would see the dream he promised was ludicrous and in the 1990's formally give up the idea of taking the Mainland by force. Even then they still could not face the real reason why they had lost the hearts of the people on the Mainland. . Now, Saturday March 27th, the KMT and PFP leaders were again giving speeches. The KMT was the true party of the people. The polls taken before the election by their own people had said they would win. If Chen got more votes (albeit just 30,000), the only explanation was he cheated.

Blind to the steady erosion of their followers, blind to the splintering of the party over power sharing, blind to corruption, they could not face the reality that they were losing the hearts of the people. They remained blind even to the fact that Lien and Soong's combined voting advantage of 60% to 40% in 2000 had slipped to a 50.11 to 49.89 % advantage for Chen in 2004.

Perhaps they were secure that they too like Chiang and his cohorts had an abundance of money and property elsewhere; so they could afford to risk the future. Hanging all their credibility on the gossamer thread of the pre-election polls, they said they were entitled to win. These were the polls that flip-flopped regularly in a race many said was too close to call. In the closing moments before Election Day, the polls favored the KMT so they should be trusted. If the KMT lost, the only explanation was Chen like Mao had cheated. The assassination attempt had to be a fake.

Chiang Kai-shek and Mao had been lucky; they both controlled the media in their respective lands and they would be dead before revisionist historians could catch up with them. Lien and Soong do not have that luxury. They live in an age of a freer press, of greater transparency and of instantaneous communication. Still they are willing to stake the reputation and credibility of the party on the slimmest of threads. And the people? They followed. Riots were threatened; due process of law was ignored. Call it denial; call it blind faith; call it irrational; the KMT/PFP faithful blindly followed. In the week following the grand protest, a team of forensic experts from the United States was already shooting holes in the KMT/PFP arguments. These experts, associates of the famed Henry Lee, shot holes in the wild theories of fake pictures and claims of Hollywood created bloodstains. The experts conclusively stated that the wound
sustained by Chen was definitely a grazing gunshot wound.

Deny, deny, and deny, so the speeches, protests and threatened riots go on. The KMT/PFP credibility continues to slip away. They will only accept the answer that they have been cheated. Sadly the next generation of KMT leaders refuses to challenge this intransigence of their aging leaders as happened in the days of Chiang Kai-shek.

The week progresses. A diminished group of protesters remains, gathered now ironically at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. More protests are promised but still with no supporting proof, reason or justification. The strains of the Dies Irae are playing in the background.
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Jerome F. Keating Ph.D. an author and educator who has lived in Taiwan for 15 years is co-author of the book Island in the Stream, a Quick Case Study of Taiwan's Complex History.