The Taiwanese opposition explodes and invites the cameras

For weeks, Taiwan’s two main opposition parties had been moving toward a coalition in a bid to dethrone the island’s democracy’s ruling party in the upcoming presidential election, an outcome Beijing would welcome. The elections were a choice, according to an elder statesman of Taiwan’s opposition between war and peace.

But this week, the two sides – both claiming they are better placed to secure peace with China – spectacularly chose to go to war against each other. A nascent deal for a joint presidential ticket between the longstanding Nationalist Party and the upstart Taiwan People’s Party unraveled with the speed, melodrama and sustained vitriol of a wedding gone wrong.

A meeting opened to journalists on Thursday seemed intended as a show of goodwill within the opposition. But it featured sniping between rival spokespeople, a long-winded ode to the spirit of Thanksgiving by Terry Gou — a tycoon-turned-politician who tried to nudge the opposition toward unity — and mutual accusations of bad faith between the two presidential candidates who had tried to make a deal: Hou Yu-ih of the Nationalist Party and Ko Wen-je, the founder of the Taiwan People’s Party.

Mr. Gou at one point tried to break the icy tensions by saying he needed a bathroom break.

“I don’t want a quiet ending on this Thanksgiving Day,” he later told reporters after Mr. Hou and his two allies left the stage. “But unfortunately it looks like it will be a silent ending.”

Friday was the registration deadline for Taiwan’s elections, which will take place on January 13, and by midday both Mr Hou and Mr Ko had officially registered as presidential candidates, confirming that there would be no unity ticket. Mr Gou, who had also thrown his hat into the ring, withdrew from the race.

Taiwan’s young, powerful democratic politics have often seen raw drama. Yet even seasoned observers of the Taiwanese scene this week are puzzled and baffled as to why the opposition parties would cause such a public rift over who would be the presidential candidate on a unity ticket, and who would accept the vice-presidential nomination.

‘It really defies theories about coalition formation’ Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said of the week’s bickering. “How do you tell undecided voters to ‘still vote for me’ after a very publicly messy, deliberately uninformed debate about who should be first and who should be second?”

The collapse of the proposed opposition pact could have consequences beyond Taiwan, affecting the tense balance between Beijing – which claims the self-governing island as its own – and Washington over the island’s future status.

The situation also makes it more likely that Taiwan’s Vice President Lai Ching-te, the presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), will win the election – an outcome that will certainly displease the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Lai’s party is affirming Taiwan’s distinctive identity and claims to nationhood, and has moved closer to the United States. China’s leaders could respond to a victory for him by escalating threatening military activities around Taiwan, which is about 100 miles off the Chinese coast.

A victory for the nationalists could reopen communications with China, which largely stalled shortly after Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected president in 2016. And a third consecutive loss to the nationalists, who favor closer ties and negotiations with Beijing, could undermine the situation. Chinese confidence that they remain a viable force.

Taiwan’s first-past-the-post system for electing its president awards victory to the candidate with the highest raw percentage of votes. Mr Lai has been leading in the polls for months, but his expected share of the vote is still that was below 40 percent in many studies, meaning the opposition could overtake its lead if it were to rally behind a single candidate. Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko have been in the mid-to-high 20s in the polls for months, suggesting that it could be difficult for either to overtake Mr. Lai unless the other candidate steps aside.

“This could deter moderate voters who might have voted for a joint ticket to block the DPP,” Mr Nachman said of the row between the opposition parties. “Now those moderate voters will look at this team in a different light.”

For now, many Taiwanese seem preoccupied – sometimes joyful, sometimes anguished – by the spectacle of recent days. “Wave Makers,” a recent Netflix drama series, showed Taiwanese electoral politics as a noble, if sometimes cutthroat, affair. This week was more like the political satire “Veep.”

Last weekend, the Nationalist Party and the Taiwan People’s Party appeared to be on the verge of striking a unity ticket, with both agreeing to decide on their choice of a joint presidential candidate – Mr Hou or Mr Ko – by examining election polls to determine who was the strongest. shot for victory.

But teams of statistical experts put forward by each party could not agree on which polls to use and what to do with the results, and the parties became embroiled in days of bickering over the numbers and their implications . At press conferences, rival spokespeople brandished printouts of polls and struggled to explain complex statistical concepts.

The real issue was which leader would claim the presidential spot, and the row revealed a deep wariness between the Nationalists – a party with more than a century of history also known as the Kuomintang or KMT – and the Taiwan People’s Party, which Mr. Ko, a surgeon and former mayor of Taipei, founded in 2019.

“The KMT, as the grand old party, could never make way for an upstart party, so structurally it was very difficult for them to figure out how to work together,” said Brian Hioe, one of the founders and editors of New Bloom, a Taiwanese magazine that takes a critical look at mainstream politics. On the other hand, Mr. Hioe added: “Ko Wen-je’s party has a need to differentiate itself from the KMT – to show that it is independent and different – ​​and therefore it would cooperate with the KMT by doing many of his party members would be seen as a betrayal.”

Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s nationalist president from 2008 to 2016, intervened in an attempt to broker an agreement between his party and Mr. Ko. Hopes rose on Thursday when Mr Hou announced he would wait at Mr Ma’s office to hold negotiations with Mr Ko.

But it soon became clear that Mr. Ko and Mr. Hou remained divided. Mr Ko refused to go to Mr Ma’s office and insisted on talks at another location. Mr. Hou stayed in Mr. Ma’s office for hours, waiting for Mr. Ko to relent. Ultimately, Mr. Hou agreed to meet at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Taipei, and party officials solemnly announced that the talks would take place in Room 2538.

Dozens of journalists gathered at the hotel, waiting for a possible announcement. Anticipation mounted as Mr Hou entered a conference room where journalists and live feed cameras waited. But he sat with a fixed smile for about twenty minutes before Mr. Ko arrived menacingly. Mr Gou, the tycoon, opened proceedings with his Thanksgiving tribute and called for unity, recalling his wedding ceremony at the same hotel. But it soon became clear that Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko were no closer.

On Friday, Taiwanese had shared images online and joked about the opposition’s public spats. Photos of Room 2538, a suite at the Grand Hyatt, circulated online. Some compared the spectacle to “The separation ring”, a popular Taiwanese television show in which feuding couples and their in-laws aired their grievances on camera.

Some drew a bleaker conclusion: Dysfunction on the opposition side was making Taiwan’s democracy weaker.

“In a healthy democracy, No. 2 and No. 3 will work together to challenge No. 1,” said Wu Tzu-chia, chairman of My Formosa, an online magazine. “This should be a very rigorous process, but in Taiwan it has become very crude, just like buying meat and vegetables at the market.”