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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons A week in the world
Electoral affinities
By Peter SnowdonIt was a good week for democratic opposition parties everywhere, as human rights activists, former guerrillas and veteran liberals emerged from the political wilderness to inaugurate new eras in the annals of their respective countries.
With elections proceeding on three continents, the eyes of the international media were firmly fixed on Taiwan, where the results were always likely to carry the greatest geo-political charge. However, the election of Chen Sui-bian as president passed off peacefully last weekend, despite the threats of bloody intervention issued by the rulers of the island's "motherland", China, should the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate win the day.
Though perceived as the most radical of the three principal candidates, 49-year-old Chen, former mayor of Taipei and a distinguished human rights lawyer, had taken pains lately to distance himself from his party's uncompromising stand on the issue of political autonomy, pledging that he would not declare independence unless China were to invade. These reassurances, together with his offer to visit Beijing before being sworn into office, his explicit desire to see closer economic ties with the mainland, and the apparent precariousness of his position -- he was elected with only 39 per cent of the vote, and the DPP has only 71 seats in the 203-member parliament -- seem to have encouraged the Chinese leadership to replace the blustering rhetoric of the last few weeks with a more low-key wait-and-see approach.
Chen owed his election less to a tidal wave of support for his anti-corruption platform -- the Kuomintang party which has ruled the island for 50 years is a by-word for nepotism, and has more money in its own foreign currency accounts than do most developing countries -- than to a split in nationalist ranks. Growing disaffection led upstart populist James Soong to stand as an independent, thus effectively splitting the pro-establishment vote. Soong took a very respectable 34 per cent, and shortly after the results were published Sunday, announced he was quitting the Kuomintang to found his own party.
The ambivalence displayed by Taiwan's voters is the result of a complex, and unresolved history. "Discovered" by the Portuguese in the 1500s, the island was annexed to the Chinese empire a hundred years later, and a majority of its present inhabitants are immigrants from the mainland who moved there over the next centuries (indigenous Taiwanese now represent less than two per cent of the inhabitants). In 1895, control of the colony passed to Japan until, in the chaos following the end of the Second World War, it was seized by the recently-routed nationalist soldiers of Chiang Kai-shek, who hoped to use it as a bridgehead from which to reconquer the mainland. These hopes came to nothing. Instead, the Kuomintang stayed put in Taiwan, imposing the alien language of Mandarin on its inhabitants, and fomenting discord with their giant neighbour, which has never accepted their claim to represent the "real" China. Meanwhile, for most of the Taiwanese, their new dictatorial rulers were just one more foreign occupying power (martial law remained in force until 1987, and the first democratic national election was held in 1996).
The 1970s saw a resurgence of cultural nationalism, though the cultures that were revived were essentially those of the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong from which the present Taiwanese communities are descended. However, though feelings towards China may be more complex than many would suppose, recent opinion polls show fewer than two per cent of the population favouring reunification, while a majority support the maintenance of the status quo.
Following the successful reintegration of Hong Kong and Macao, the government of Zhu Rongji has made the reunification of China and Taiwan one of its top political priorities.
History was also being made this week in Senegal, where the election of Me Abdoulaye Wade as president marks the end of the Socialist Party's 40-year rule, and the first time in the post-colonial era that a French-speaking African nation has changed regime without resort to arms. A self-styled "liberal" -- "I've nothing against socialism, but the name was already taken", he once joked -- 74-year-old Wade was declared victor by the local media within hours of the second-round polls closing Sunday. Outgoing President Abdu Diouf, who led the country for 19 years, after serving as prime minister under Leopold Sedar Senghor, and was comfortably ahead in the first round of voting on 27 February, phoned Wade Monday morning to offer his congratulations.
Wade's campaign was backed by a broad alliance of 20 parties, ranging from the far left to the moderate right. The support of ex-prime minister and prominent socialist dissident Mustafa Niasse, who himself scored 17 per cent of the first-round vote, was doubtless crucial. As an establishment figure, Niasse was essential in turning Wade from a focus of popular discontent -- his third presidential campaign in 1988 dissolved into riots, which led to his imprisonment -- into a serious candidate, in a country were only 30 per cent of the population are registered on the electoral roll.
Meanwhile, the former guerrilleros of El Salvador were making their own successful transition to democratic respectability, as the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) completed its transformation into a political party by coming first in both national and municipal elections. While its victory over the right-wing National Republican Alliance (Arena) in the parliamentary contest was a close call, and leaves the party with only a minority of seats, Hector Silva, the FMLN mayor of the capital San Salvador, was triumphantly reelected with a 16-point lead, and is now seen as the left's natural candidate for the 2003 presidential elections.
Not that the whole country has suddenly changed political allegiance: with a 64 per cent abstention rate, the vote was as much a vote against Arena, as for the FMLN. The right has presided over the continuing stagnation of the country's economy since the end of the civil war, with unemployment running at around 40 per cent, and over half the population living below the poverty line.
