RESTRICTED
Reference
5. There is little doubt that the Kuomintang will win a simple majority of the seats. It is contesting almost all the seats, while the main opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, is fielding candidates in only just under one hundred, although there are also a number of further candidates being fielded by other opposition parties. The opposition share of the vote has been rising in elections over the last few years. In the 1986 partial elections to the Legislative Yuan and the National Assembly, the opposition won just over 33 per cent of the vote
(which translated into only about 20 per cent of the seats), and in the 1989 partial elections to the Legislative Yuan, the DPP won just over 30 per cent of the vote while other independents won a further 10 per cent (again their combined total of seats was rather less, only 29 out of 101 contested). If a similar result occurred at the present elections, the opposition parties combined would exceed the 25 per cent mark which would mean that they would be in a position to block any future constitutional amendment. Kuomintang would thus be forced into negotiating with the opposition in order to push through the further constitutional reforms that may be needed.
The
6. On past voting patterns therefore, the opposition stands a good chance of winning a sufficient number of seats to be in a strong position in a future National Assembly. Whether the DPP can achieve this on its own is perhaps more problematical and all the opposition groups suffer from the likelihood that their share of the total vote is likely to be noticeably higher than the number of seats they actually win. The KMT may not find it that difficult to persuade some of the smaller groups to vote with it, but even that is a considerable retreat from its previous complete dominance.
This is
At the
7. The DPP has ensured that the question of Taiwan independence is very much an issue in the campaign. Its Party congress in October adopted a call for Taiwan independence, subject to a national referendum on the subject, as part of its Party platform. technically against the law and has proved a considerable embarrassment to the authorities as they have no wish to be seen to be taking sanctions against the principle opposition Party on the eve of such important elections (in theory this could include declaring the DPP illegal and ordering its disbandment). same time it is impossible for them to take such an outright challenge lying down. For the DPP, this may turn out to be something of a two edged sword (and indeed there have been elements in the Party which did not want to be so closely allied to advocacy of Taiwan independence). There is no conclusive evidence that independence is any great vote winner. Opinion polls have shown a consistently low level of support for outright independence, although it is an issue that clearly will not go away. Some elements within the DPP would prefer to concentrate on offering an alternative programme to the Kuomintang relating to Taiwan's internal domestic policies rather than to its international status. Indeed such thinking was behind the resignation of one of its more colourful figures, Ju Gau-jeng, earlier in the year to found his own political party. Many of the more moderate members of the DPP favour a less confrontational approach against the KMT and its "one China" pretensions. However the independence faction won a dominant position at the last DPP Congress although the Chairman of the DPP does still come from the moderate faction. In some ways this division goes to the heart of
RESTRICTED