Midterm Elections in Taiwan: Potential Threats to Taiwanese Democracy
November 26, 2022, became a deciding point for the future of Taiwanese democracy, which has been recently ranked extremely high in the official Global Freedom ranking, and, consequently, its overall human rights performance. Taiwan’s Midterm elections offered the suffrage population an opportunity to choose their city council members and mayor/county magistrate accompanied by a constitutional referendum on amending the Constitution of the Republic of China, a superior legislative document adopted by the Second Republic of China back in 1946. The proposed amendment aimed to lower the voting age from 20 to 18. Not only did the referendum fail to pass the amendments to the Constitution, but the outcomes of the midterm elections disproved the public expectations of the future of the currently vulnerable and China-pressured Taiwan’s politics.
As per the election results, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a political faction that has so far controlled two governmental branches, both executive and legislature, lost to the Kuomintang (KMT) with a strong Chinese nationalist and socialist orientation. The DPP experienced its most critical defeat in decades, with only five seats won compared to the KMT’s thirteen. Consequently, the now-former DPP leader Ms. Tsai Ing-Wen, a current president of the country, resigned as the head of the party due to the unexpected defeat. What does it potentially mean for Taiwanese democracy and human rights performance?
The KMT-run government will most likely ignore numerous human rights violations in the People’s Republic of China. Within broader discourse, besides having close ties with China, the party is widely known for ushering a democratic change in Taiwan by lifting martial law in April 1986 and largely contributing to the Taiwanese social welfare enhancement. However, the period of the KMT’s government ruling is regardless mostly referred to as an authoritarian type of “democracy in a cage”, branded with state surveillance activities, use of state violence, and a long history of competently managed political oppression. Only over time will it be evident whether the KMT has eventually changed its strategy and adjusted the policies to a democratic Taiwanese society. Yet deeply rooted affiliation with Beijing and the party’s tendency to the authoritarian way of ruling allow it to assume the inevitable change in the country’s internal and foreign policies and the way human rights are perceived.
Another possible implication could be intensified attempts on China’s side to conduct wider campaigns, most likely built upon information warfare and economic incentives, for the 2024 presidential race. Taiwan has long been a target of massive disinformation drives carried out by foreign government actors, according to the V-Dem Institute that measures democracy internationally. Most of the false information flows usually come from China. Disinformation inflows negatively affect societal functioning and undermine a wide range of human rights. Therefore, the possibility of intensified information warfare usage in Taiwan concerning the additional support for the KMT political agenda and ideology poses a significant challenge to the stability of Taiwanese democracy and social welfare.
Although Taiwan still has all the chances to survive as a vibrant and competitive democracy, the November 26 elections added to the complexity of its attempts to detach from the China-dictated policies and ideology. Taiwanese society is currently torn apart between opting for the pro-China KTM as a safeguard of no inter-state military escalations and saving its democratic foundation that the Taiwanese have been shaping and supporting for long decades.