Democracy is not a perfect system – and South Africans needn’t look far beyond our borders to realise this. Indeed, cases of ‘bad democracy’ seem to be plentiful around the world.
Many will regard the intense partisanship in the United States or the chaotic corruption in some states in southern Europe as examples. And, for many South Africans, it is doubtless exasperating to see the African National Congress (ANC) continually re-elected no matter how many corruption scandals beset the party.
But what of a good contemporary example of democracy working well, of citizens putting aside partisanship and tribalism, weighing up the reality of their circumstances and voting to hold government officials to account? I believe that a good illustration of this happened in Taiwan last year.
The story begins in 2018 with Taiwan’s most recent local government elections. At the time, Taiwan was governed by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) under President Tsai Ing-wen. The Taiwanese economy was struggling and many began to question Tsai’s more hardline approach to China as compared to the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and its warmer relations with the People’s Republic. The election result was disastrous for the DPP. Of Taiwan’s 22 municipal regions (divided into cities and counties) the DPP held the mayorship of 13 prior to the election, but were left with just 6 after being defeated by KMT challengers.
Tsai resigned as the chairperson of the DPP following this defeat and many other senior DPP politicians followed suit. The future looked dismal for the DPP, as Taiwan’s presidential and parliamentary elections were to be held just over one year later, in January 2020.
Populist platform
Perhaps one of the more interesting electoral wins in the 2018 election was that of Han Kuo-yu. Han ran on a populist platform and a KMT ticket, drawing much media attention as a political personality. What was also significant was the city where he was running – Kaohsiung. The DPP had historically dominated politics in this southern city and Han’s election meant that he was the first KMT mayor of Kaohsiung since 1998. He took office in December 2018.
Han’s rise in popularity eventually led to a wave of support for him to run in the upcoming presidential election. He entered the race to be the KMT’s nominee for president in June, and was officially nominated in July. (Han challenged incumbent Tsai Ing-wen in last year’s national election, and lost in a big defeat that was at least partially galvanised by the recent protests in Hong Kong, but that’s another story.)
For now, consider that just six months into his term as mayor, Han launched his bid president and took four months leave to do so. There is often talk of politicians doing things simply to ‘climb the ladder’ of political office and gain election to a higher position; in Mayor Han’s case, his attention to his own political ambition was regarded by many as an abdication of responsibility.
Soon after Han’s loss in the 2020 general election, he returned to Kaohsiung, but already discontent with him was brewing. A petition for a recall vote had been launch in January, gaining tens of thousands of signatures. By March, the threshold for a recall vote to be held (10% of the electorate) had been reached.
Han challenged the recall vote in court and called on his supporters to boycott the recall election – so perhaps it was no surprise that just 2.6% of voters voted against his recall. What is more impressive, however, is the number of people who voted to recall Han. Just over one year after being elected as mayor, Han Kuo-yu was recalled with a larger number of votes than he had received in his mayoral election. This stunning turn of fortune reflected a great mobilisation of civil society and voters in Kaohsiung.
A populist candidate wins where his party hasn’t won in 20 years, abdicates his duties and responsibilities to pursue higher office, and is thoroughly punished at the polls. The story isn’t quite that simple, of course (this video explains the saga in some detail), but it’s a great example of democracy working: in a relatively short time, the populace went against their elected leader when it turned out that he may not have had their best interests at heart.
Democracy against all odds
It is because of little political stories like this that Taiwan is such an interesting place. It’s a democracy that is a democracy against all odds, situated right next an enormously powerful, hostile, and not-so-democratic state always threatening annexation ‘by force if necessary.’ Yet within Taiwan, life goes on. Taiwan arguably handled the pandemic better than any other government in the world, with just a handful of cases and deaths and no widespread lockdowns of any sort – all this without even being a member of the World Health Organisation. Indeed, Taiwan may be one of the only places to have emerged from 2020 in good shape, due to its stellar performance, in spite of everything.
If South Africa were governed like this, imagine what a country we would be.
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