Following the election of Huang Kuo-chang as the new chair of the Taiwan People's Party, political analyst Courtney Donovan Smith explains why the party is unlikely to move back to a centrist position but will retain its core support base.
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00:00To start with, Huang Guocheng is now the chairperson of the TPP until 2026.
00:05What does this mean for the party?
00:08That's an interesting question.
00:09Now he has described on Facebook, after he won the chair race, he said that he wanted
00:15to make it a progressive Taiwan-centric party.
00:19However, that isn't exactly how they've been voting.
00:22They've been voting in lockstep with the KMT.
00:27And what's interesting is that right now, their voting record makes them as much pan-blue
00:32as when the term was created in the year 2000, when you had the People's First Party and
00:38the New Party allied with the KMT, and they voted as a bloc.
00:42So right now, for all intents and purposes, the TPP is essentially a pan-blue party.
00:49Now, will that change?
00:52Probably not, because Huang Guocheng has been the caucus convener for the party since
00:59February 1st.
01:00So is there any chance that the TPP can be a centrist party at all, or are they solidly
01:07in the pan-blue camp now?
01:08Well, I mean, obviously things can change, but so far, Huang Guocheng has not shown any
01:17interest in moving in that direction, other than that Facebook post.
01:21Now, it's worth noting that he has actually more power than Cohen did in many ways, because
01:28he's both the party's caucus convener and the party chair.
01:33Now, the candidate for chair who might have been more centrist, Cai Biru, who also in
01:40polling appears to have been more popular with the general public, she only got 3 point
01:46something percent of the vote from party members.
01:48So the hardcore party members are solidly in the camp of Huang Guocheng, and Cai Biru
01:55lost in a landslide.
01:59So where the general public is more aligned with Cai Biru is not where the party membership
02:06is.
02:07What should Huang Guocheng then strategically aim for in moving the TPP forward?
02:13Strategically, I think the TPP has two paths they could follow.
02:18One is continue on the path that they're on, and they have lost over 10,000 members, it's
02:26worth noting.
02:28And they used to have 32,500 or so, and now they have a little over 19,000.
02:36So they have lost a lot of support.
02:39On the other hand, the support that they do have right now is very loyal and very solid.
02:46Now, in opinion polling, they've lost maybe 7, 8, 10 percent, depending on the poll, from
02:53the general public, but they still have far and away enough support to continue to maintain
03:01a presence in the legislature with their current support base.
03:06Or they could try to move toward the center, and go back to their original ideology of
03:11being a party between the Pan-Blue and the Pan-Green.
03:15They could try and go back to that and their original ideology of being scientific, pragmatic,
03:20getting things done, do the right thing, that kind of thing that Ke Wenzhe originally championed.
03:27But as far as I can tell, the party membership and Huang Guocheng does not have any appetite
03:32for that at all.