台灣立法院選舉和總統選舉後，國民黨實行內部改造，同時動態應對外部政治。
3月初，國民黨黃復興黨部更名為「退伍軍人服務工作委員會」。該黨部是由時任「國軍退除役官兵就業輔導委員會」主任委員的已故蔣經國於1956年7月成立，目的是團結退除役官兵支持國民黨，黃復興黨部人數從最高的20萬人下降到只有8萬人。這次改組的目的是消除「黨中黨」的傾向。
國民黨被指缺乏「黨內民主」
此外，國民黨中常委最近選出了27名委員，但黨章規定中常委的人數上限應在35人至40人之間，並應從中央委員中選出29人。2024年1月下旬舉行中常委選舉時，有30名成員登記參加選舉。然而，30名候選人中有3名未能完成註冊詳細信息，剩下27名成員競爭29個職位。這意味着27名候選人全部輕鬆當選，顯示黨員對參選中常委缺乏興趣。對當前政黨結構的批評者，包括一些年輕的親藍學者，指出國民黨內部缺乏「黨內民主」，根據他們的觀點，中央委員會缺乏實質性權力，其成員肩負着「重大責任」，例如組織捐款活動，甚至支付他們參加黨中央會議的交通費。
批評者也認為，即使與台灣另外兩大政黨民進黨和台灣民眾黨相比，國民黨內部也「不民主」。民進黨中常委增選了民選的縣長、民選的市議員，以及民選的立法院議員，從而在黨部與各級政治機構的民選黨員之間建立了必要的制度聯繫。目前，民進黨中央委員會17名委員中，有11名是民選政治人物。
台大政治系教授左正東等9名親藍學者組成了「開放政黨實驗室」，指出上一屆國民黨中央委員會有10名是民選公職，包括7名立委，但到2024年，國民黨27名中央委員會委員中只有8名民選公職，其中立委只有一名。結果是，根據少壯派的說法，國民黨總部往往與民選政治人物「脫節」。2024年2月，少壯派主張把縣市長和國會領袖納為國民黨當然中常委；然而，這個意見並沒有得到國民黨中央和領導層的重視。
從國民黨黨員參與中常委投票的情況來看，其參與率也較以往為低。總體而言，有1968名代表有資格投票給中常委候選人，但只有1263名黨員登記投票，因為有些黨員沒有繳納黨費。國民黨聲稱，黨代表大會中有79.33%的代表投票支持中常委候選人。不過，批評者表示，投票率遠低於79.33%，只有50.91%，因為那些未繳納黨費的人應該被納入統計範圍。不管投票率如何統計，批評人士表示，79%的投票率低於過去90%的投票率。
中常委缺乏合法性
批評人士認為，國民黨內部組織的問題在於，馬英九任黨主席時，試圖「避免」黨總部干預黨的政策，從而削弱了國民黨中常委的影響力。黨的政策是由立法院內外的國民黨重量級人物和元老組成的核心集團決定的，許多黨內重量級人物和老年領袖不願參加中常委選舉。據悉，目前的中常委對於參加2026年和2028年地方選舉的候選人並沒有真正的發言權，因為黨內元老和民選政客的聲音往往更有影響力。
在1920年代，國民黨實行列寧主義的領導風格和「民主集中制」的原則，其中央執行委員會常務委員會權力相當大，地位令人尊敬。當時，國民黨中央委員選舉了中央執行委員會常務委員，加強了中央執行委員與中央執行委員會常委的聯繫。然而，隨着時間的推移，國民黨修改了中常委選舉辦法，授權黨代表在黨代表大會上投票選舉中常委。雖然部分中常委來自中央委員會，但由於部分當選的中常委是在立法院選舉中得票數較少的委員，因此現有的中常委缺乏足夠的合法性。
早在2018年11月，時任台中市長的國民黨黨員盧秀燕就主張把國民黨民選縣市長納入中常委當然委員，以增強中常委代表性。針對盧秀燕的建議，國民黨黨主席吳敦義邀請15名民選國民黨市長以觀察員身份進入中央常務委員會，但無權提出議案和否決黨的決策──這一象徵性舉措並沒有真正加強與國民黨總部與國民黨民選公職之間的制度聯繫。
有趣的是，民進黨成立時，模仿了國民黨的組織架構和安排。民進黨黨主席由全體黨員透過「一人一票」制度直接選舉產生，但中常委則由中央委員選舉產生。民進黨的內部政治與國民黨一樣，都是派系政治和對抗性的。但民進黨的中常委選舉方式更加列寧主義和傳統性，中央委員會委員和中常委直接掛鈎，不像國民黨的改革削弱了中央委員會與中常委會的直接聯繫。最重要的是，只要民進黨選拔了民選縣市長和民選立委（民進黨17名民進黨中常委中，有11人是民選公職），民進黨內民選公職與黨總部的聯繫，比國民黨緊密得多。
更令一些國民黨中常委缺乏合法性的情況變得嚴重的是，現行的制度使某些特定派系變成主導，例如現在的朱立倫派，其成員現在在中常委會中擁有具影響力的聲音。這並不奇怪，因為過去的國民黨中常委會也是受派系政治影響的。然而，鑑於馬英九等前國民黨黨魁和元老傳統上對黨的方向保持着具影響力的發言權，從支持侯友宜作為2024年總統選舉的候選人，到與台灣民眾黨結盟的嘗試流產後，任何派系控制中常委會都將遭遇其他派系的挑戰，包括民選政客組成的派系和黨內元老、前領袖組成的派系的挑戰。因此，國民黨中常委會未來的改革值得我們關注與觀察。現任黨主席朱立倫是否會在2025年5月的黨主席選舉後發起修改黨章，並加強中常委與民選公職之間的制度聯繫，還有待觀察。
新的立法院政治拉鋸戰
雖然國民黨的內部改革仍是一個懸而未決的問題，但其當選的立法院院長韓國瑜在處理立法院政治時卻出現了一些爭議。他在立法院支持國民黨籍立法委員傅崐萁提出的兩項草案，一項是「環（台）島高速鐵路建設特別條例草案」，另一項是「國道6號東延花蓮建設特別條例草案」。民進黨批評韓國瑜「違反」立法院議事規則所規定的中立原則，但嚴格來說，議事規則並沒有明確規定院長是否不得在立法院署名附議或支持草案。3月15日立法院內務會議上，韓國瑜抓住民進黨議員缺席的機會，三度詢問立委對草案一讀是否有意見。民進黨議員沒有出席，韓國瑜以第一階段通過兩項草案的方式結束了會議。當然，民進黨議員很可能會在委員會程序和二讀中給國民黨議員製造麻煩，但韓國瑜處理國民黨提出草案的方式，表明了台灣地區國民黨和民進黨之間新的立法院政治拉鋸戰。
為了對抗國民黨在立法院的影響力，即將離任的民進黨籍台灣總統蔡英文3月15日在她的總統府會見了民眾黨主席柯文哲。這是蔡英文在2018年與柯文哲會面6年後的首次會面，當時民進黨試圖與當時正在競選連任的台北市現任市長柯文哲進行談判。2018年的那次會面未能達成任何共識，但柯文哲以微弱票數擊敗國民黨的丁守中和民進黨的姚文智獲勝。
2024年初立法選舉後，民進黨明顯試圖拉攏民眾黨納入合作共識的傘下，試圖建立所謂的「政黨溝通平台」。國民黨批評蔡英文的舉動是一場「政治秀」。鑑於民進黨在立法院擁有8席，在任何法案和議案中都可以成為支持者，其討價還價的能力自然會引起民進黨和國民黨的注意。
最後，國民黨一直在進行對外政治，於3月14日派副主席夏立言到大陸進行為期7天的訪問。夏立言正在重慶、成都、濟南、青島等城市訪問，會見台商和「朋友」。他強調接受九二共識並與大陸對話的重要性。身為馬英九領導下的台灣陸委會前主任，在台灣執政當局拒絕接受九二共識的情況下，夏立言或許可以被視為大陸與台灣之間的橋樑之一。
緦而言之，國民黨在2024年台灣立法院選舉中表現亮眼後不久，其內部改革就成為黨內部分少壯派關注的焦點；其立法院政治在立法院中日益突出，民眾黨將成為決定法案和動議命運的「造王者」；國民黨與大陸的外部政治將是值得進一步觀察的領域。雖然國民黨是台灣島內政治的反對派，但其未來的改革、與民進黨在立法院的競爭，以及可能與民眾黨的政治合作，加上與大陸的關係，不僅將成為台灣政治發展的重要風向標，也將成為台灣與大陸之間的動態關係的重要風向標。
KMT’s Internal Reform and External Politics
After the legislative and presidential elections in Taiwan, the Kuomintang (KMT) has been undergoing internal transformations and dealing with external politics dynamically.
In early March, the KMT renamed its Huang Fu-hsing branch of the “veterans service working committee.” The branch was established in July 1956 by the late Chaing Ching-kuo, at that time a minister of the Veteran Affairs Commission, to mobilise the military personnel’s support of the KMT. Its membership declined from an apex of 200,000 members to only 80,000. The restructuring move aimed at eliminating any tendency of “a party within a party.”
Moreover, the KMT Central Standing Committee (CSC) has recently selected 27 members, but the party constitution says that the maximum number of CSC should be somewhere between 35 and 40, and that 29 CSC members should be elected. When the election of the CSC was called in late January 2024, there were 30 members registering for the election. However, three of the 30 candidates failed to complete their registration details, leaving 27 members competing for 29 positions. This meant that all the 27 candidates were easily elected, showing the lack of interest of party members to run in the CSC election. Critics of the current party structure, including some younger “blue” scholars, pointed out the absence of “intra-party democracy” within the KMT, where the CSC, according to their views, lacks substantial powers and whose members shoulder “heavy responsibilities,” such as organising donation campaigns and even paying for their transportation costs to attend the meetings of the party centre.
Critics have also argued that the KMT is internally “undemocratic” even compared with the other two large political parties in Taiwan, namely the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The DPP’s Central Standing Committee has coopted the directly elected county mayors, elected municipal councillors, and representatives of the directly elected members of the Legislative Assembly, thereby providing a necessary institutional linkage between the party headquarters and the elected party members at different levels of the political institutions. Currently, among the 17 members of the DPP’s CSC, 11 are directly elected politicians.
Nine progressive members of the KMT formed a group named “Open Party Laboratory,” indicating that while the KMT’s CSC had 27 members during the last term of office, 10 of them were directly elected politicians. Nonetheless, in 2024, only one out of the 27-member CSC in the KMT is directly elected. The result is that, according to the Young Turks, the KMT headquarters tends to be “detached” from the directly elected politicians. In February 2024, the progressive group advocated that the directly elected mayors and the parliamentary leaders should be coopted as ex-officio members of the KMT’s CSC; nevertheless, its view was not heeded seriously by the party centre and leadership.
In terms of the participation of KMT members in voting for their CSC members, their participation rate is comparatively lower than the past. Overall, there were 1,968 representatives eligible to vote for the CSC members, but only 1,263 members registered to vote as some did not pay for their party membership fees. The KMT claimed that 79.33 percent of its representatives in the party congress voted for CSC members. However, critics said that the voter turnout was much lower than 79.33 percent, namely 50.91, because those who did not pay their party membership fees should be included in the calculation. Regardless of how the voting turnout was tabulated, critics said that the 79 percent turnout was lower than the 90 percent turnout in the past.
The problem of the KMT’s internal organisation was that, according to critics, the Ma Ying-jeou leadership diluted the influence of the KMT’s CSC by trying to “avoid” the party headquarters to interfering with party policies. Party policies were decided by a core group of KMT heavyweights and elders inside and outside the Legislative Yuan. Many party heavyweights and elderly leaders did not want to run in the CSC elections. It is reported that the current CSC does not really have a say on the candidates running for the 2026 and 2028 local elections because the party elders and elected politicians tend to have a more influential voice.
In the 1920s, The KMT adopted the Leninist style of leadership and the principle of “democratic centralism,” making its CSC quite powerful with a respectable status. At that time, the KMT Central Committee (CC) members elected the CSC members, enhancing the CC-CSC linkage. However, with the passage of time, the KMT revamped the CSC election method by empowering the party representatives to vote for CSC members in the party congress. Although some CSC members come from the Central Committee, the current CSC lacks sufficient legitimacy because some of the elected CSC members were those who gained relatively fewer votes in legislative elections.
As early as November 2018, KMT party member Lu Shiow-yen, who was elected as Taichung mayor at that time, advocated that the directly elected KMT mayors should become ex-officio members of the CSC for the sake of enhancing the CSC representativeness. In response to Lu’s suggestion, the KMT party chair Wu Den-yih invited 15 elected KMT mayors to sit in the CSC as observers without the power to initiate motions and to veto party policies – a symbolic move that did not really strengthen the institutional linkage between the party headquarters and the elected KMT politicians.
Interestingly, when the DPP was formed, it imitated the organisational structure and arrangements of the KMT. The DPP party chair is directly elected by all party members through the “one member one vote” system, but the CSC members are elected by the Central Committee members. The DPP’s internal politics are characterised by factional politics and rivalries, as with the case of the KMT. However, the way in which the DPP’s CSC is elected is more Leninist and traditional, with a direct linkage between Central Committee members and CSC members, unlike the KMT whose reform has weakened the direct CSC-CC connections. Most importantly, so long as the CSC coopts directly elected county mayors and representatives of the elected legislators (11 out of 17 DPP CSC are now directly elected politicians), the connections between elected politicians and the party headquarters are much closer in the DPP than the KMT arrangements.
Compounding the lack of legitimacy on the part of some KMT’s CSC members was that it attracts a particular faction to become dominant, such as the current Eric Chu faction whose members now have an influential voice in the CSC. This is not surprising, as the KMT CSC in the past was also shaped by factional politics. However, given the fact that the previous KMT party leaders and elders, such as Ma Ying-jeou, have traditionally maintained an influential say in the party’s direction, ranging from the support of Hou You-yi as the candidate for the 2024 presidential elections to the abortive attempt at forming an alliance with the Taiwan People’s Party, any factional control of the CSC will have to encounter other factions, including the faction composed of directly elected politicians and the one comprised of the party elders and former leaders. As such, the future reforms within the KMT’s CSC will deserve our attention and observation. It remains to be seen whether Eric Chu, the current party chair, would perhaps initiate a move to revise the party constitution and to strengthen the institutional linkage between the CSC and elected politicians after the May 2025 party chair election.
While the KMT’s internal reform remains an unresolved issue, its elected president of the Legislative Yuan, Han Kuo-yu, has been dealing with legislative politics with some controversies. He supported his party member Fu Kun-chi in the legislature to initiate two bills, one on the high-speed railway surrounding the island of Taiwan and the other on an extension of highway number 6 in Hualien city. The DPP criticised Han for “violating” the principle of neutrality as specified in the Legislative Yuan’s standing order, but strictly speaking, the standing order does not mention clearly whether the president is disallowed to sign his or her name to second or support a bill in the legislature. During a house meeting in the Legislative Yuan on March 15, Han Kuo-yu grasped the opportunity of the absence of DPP members, asking legislators three times whether they had opinions on the bills during the first reading. No DPP member was present, and Han ended the meeting with the two bills passing through the first stage. Of course, DPP members would likely give the KMT members a hard time in the committee process and second reading, but the way in which Han handled the KMT-initiated bills demonstrated a political tug-of-war between the KMT and the DPP in Taiwan’s new legislative politics.
To counter the KMT influence in the legislature, outgoing Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP met Ko Wen-je of the People’s Party on March 15 at her “presidential” residence. This was the first time that Tsai met Ko six years after they had met in 2018, when the DPP tried to negotiate with Ko who at that time was an incumbent Taipei mayor running for another term. That meeting in 2018 failed to achieve any consensus, but Ko won with a narrow margin of votes by beating Ting Shou-chung of the KMT and Pasuya Yao Wen-chih of the DPP.
After the legislative elections in early 2024, the DPP clearly attempts to woo the TPP into its umbrella of cooperation and consensus, trying to establish a so-called “party communication platform.” The KMT criticised Tsai’s move as putting up a “political show.” Given that the TPP is holding eight seats and can become a kingmaker in any bills and motions, its bargaining power naturally attracts the attention of the DPP and KMT.
Finally, the KMT has been conducting its external politics by sending vice-chairman Andrew Hsia on March 14 for a seven-day visit to the mainland. Hsia is visiting the cities of Chongqing, Chengdu, Jinan, and Qingdao, meeting Taiwanese businesspeople and “friends.” He emphasised the importance of accepting the 1992 consensus and engaging in dialogue with the mainland. As a former director of the Mainland Affairs Council under the Ma Ying-jeou leadership in Taiwan, Hsia can perhaps be regarded as one of the bridges between the mainland and Taiwan at a time when the ruling authorities in Taiwan refuse to accept the 1992 consensus.
In conclusion, shortly after the KMT’s impressive performance in the 2024 legislative elections in Taiwan, its internal reforms have become the spotlight of some Young Turks within the party; its legislative politics are increasingly prominent in a legislature where the People’s Party is going to be a kingmaker in deciding the fate of bills and motions; and its external politics with the mainland are going to be an area that deserves further observations. Although the KMT is an opposition force in Taiwan’s domestic politics, its future reforms, legislative rivalries with the DPP and possible coalition politics with the People’s Party, and its external relations with the mainland will become a crucial indicator of not only Taiwan’s political development but also the dynamic relations between Taiwan and the mainland.
原刊於澳門新聞通訊社（MNA）網站，本社獲作者授權轉載。原文網址：https://tinyurl.com/5n6pcw7w
