Dissident upsets Sino political battle

Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui sets out this week on a visit to Central America to bolster his image overseas. But our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports that the need to pay more attention to improving his standing at home was recently underlined, when Lee failed to have things all his own way.

HONG KONG (JP): In China last week, the 15th Party congress saw the confirmation of the paramount leader as party chairman. A dour and unpopular premier was replaced by a younger reform- minded technocrat.

But the paramount leader did not get everything his own way. While he was able to appoint his own four party vice-chairmen, in the election for the party's central committee a party dissident surprisingly topped the field, even though he was holidaying in California, instead of attending the congress.

No, the promised 15th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not take place all of a sudden without anyone knowing about it. The CCP has announced that the 15th CCP Congress will start earlier than expected, on Sept. 12. This announcement marks a slight degree of progress since previously the world has only learned about congresses after they have actually started.

Also last week elsewhere in the (as yet) mythical world of One China, the Nationalist Party of China alias the Kuomintang alias the KMT held its 15th Party Congress in Taiwan.

The KMT and the CCP share one thing in common --their similarly-numbered congresses take place against the background of weakened party prestige and control over their respective territories.

The congresses are therefore a platform for trying to regain prestige and retain power. The CCP has one huge advantage over the KMT -- there are no real rival parties to the CCP, capable of attaining power within China.

But on Taiwan the KMT faces formidable opposition in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and is very close to losing overall parliamentary control.

The opposition has been immensely strengthened by the KMT's seeming inability to effectively counter the wave of criminality and corruption that has greatly reduced the ruling party's authority in the 17 months since the first ever presidential election in Chinese history in 1996.

Substantial DPP and other opposition gains are anticipated at the local elections due later this year.

Whether the KMT 15th Party Congress did go some of the way towards restoring the party's power and standing is still in doubt.

For a start, President Lee Teng-hui's own leadership has been rather lackluster since he initiated and won the presidential election. He has seemed too remote to give the leadership that Taiwan requires particularly in relation to the crime wave.

Lee's political energies have instead been focussed on changing the constitution -- the essence of which seems to be a desire to increase presidential powers, rather than any clear democratic objective.

Constitutional irritants for Lee, such as the previous need to get parliamentary approval for those whom he appoints as prime minister, have been abolished. Instead of Taiwan remaining a curious mixture of parliamentary and presidential democracy, the constitutional changes put the emphasis on presidential rule.

Lee himself now looks to many more like a traditional Chinese autocrat rather than a new-born democrat. Naturally he ran unopposed for a third term as KMT chairman.

Inevitably, he won even more votes among the party faithful -- 93.4 percent as against 82.5 percent -- than he did in 1993, even though it was technically easier to vote against him this time, since voting now was computerized, rather than by a show-of- hands.

The real loser at the Congress was Vice President and outgoing Prime Minister Lien Chan.

Appointed Premier in 1993, Lee retained Lien in that post, even after he had won the vice-presidency, for the simple reason that President Lee did not want to be bothered with getting parliamentary approval for a new prime ministerial appointee.

Lien now retires as premier after having damaged his standing as vice-president because he was unable to radically reduce crime and corruption, with the KMT's prestige greatly reduced by some highly publicized kidnappings.

At the Congress, Lien had no chance to demonstrate his strength in the party since he was reappointed unopposed, by Lee, to another term as one of four party vice-chairmen.

Similarly, Lien depends on how well Lee performs in the presidency during the next three years for his future presidential prospects. Right now, Lien runs very badly in public opinion polls.

This is in stark contrast to the man who did best politically out of the Congress, even though he pointedly did not bother to attend it. Taiwan Governor James Soong is no longer a favorite of President Lee, who abolished both Soong's post and the Taiwan provincial government structure in the recent constitutional changes.

Soong has recently stayed away from meetings of the top leadership of the KMT and he also stayed away from the Congress, by taking a week's holiday in the United States. It did him no harm.

Soong won the highest number of votes in the voting for the KMT Central Committee, beating Lee's appointee to the premiership, Vincent Siew, by 1,696 to 1,691 votes.

Since Soong also comes out of public opinion polls as the most popular politician in Taiwan, he seems to be well placed for the next presidential election.

His standing will increase if discontent increases with Lee's authoritarian tendencies, and if Vincent Siew, an economic technocrat by training and experience, is unable, like Lien, to tackle the two main domestic problems which worry Taiwanese.