At 74 and having only just narrowly avoided getting kicked out of his party, Wang Jin-pyng 王金平, the head of the Legislative Yuan, is an unlikely pick to represent the embattled KMT in the presidential election in January 2016. But driven by a lack of any other convincing contenders, that seems exactly how things may pan out.
Wang has represented the KMT in the legislature for an astounding 40 years – from the time that some legislators were still appointed to represent constituencies in the forsaken Chinese mainland. Since 1999, Wang was elected head of the legislature, and has since become one of the most powerful, most recognizable, and perhaps ironically, most mysterious secretive figures in local politics. He has presided over a parliamentary body known for its boisterousness and lack of procedure, often letting the chaos unfold naturally save for a few key times he intentionally stepped in to restore order. Partially because of his willingness to question KMT leadership, particularly President Ma’s, he has been said to be someone with “green bones draped in blue skin” 藍皮綠骨, indicating a widespread belief that the Kaohsiung native is sympathetic to the DPP.
Indeed, he is as evasive as a fox and an important powerbroker in Taipei. His friendships across the political aisle – notably a closeness to people such as DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming 柯建銘, and his apparent tacit support for the Sunflower Movement protesters seem to paint him as a someone who leans green. Just as likely: he is simply out to undermine Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九 anyway he can.
The Ma-Wang rivalry goes back to way before Ma tried (and spectacularly failed) to boot Wang from the party in late 2013. In 2005, the two duked it out to determine who would be the head of the KMT. It was a vital election for the party, which had for the first time in its long history found itself out of power. Under four years of a new Taiwan under President Chen Shui-bian 陳水扁 of the DPP, the KMT was lost, directionless, and seemingly very much out of touch. Whoever grabbed the reins of the party could steer it to a new dawn – as Ma ended up doing (for the first four years of his presidency, anyway). As a former justice minister and the well-liked mayor of Taipei, one of Ma’s big issues was taking down corruption, and he implied that Wang Jin-pyng was in his cross-hairs for possible wrongdoings. After being defeated in a landslide, Wang refused to work with Ma inside the party and quit his post as vice chairman of the KMT.
Their uneasy frienemy relationship took a turn for the worse when Ma opened a crusade to oust Wang in September 2013. An illegal wiretap of the Legislative Yuan, perpetrated by agents of the Justice Ministry, uncovered evidence that Wang had pressured a judge not to push further in a case against Wang’s colleague from the legislature, Ker Chien-ming, who had just had a breach of trust conviction overturned in the High Court. Ker asked Wang, at the nexus of the nation’s corridors of power, to exert pressure on Justice Minister Tseng Yung-fu 曾勇夫 to drop an appeal that would have brought Ker’s case to the Supreme Court.
Before any wrongdoing on Wang’s part had been proven, Ma spoke loftily about the virtues of clean governance and took it as a pretext to summarily strip Wang of his party membership – a move that, if successful, would have removed him from the Legislative Yuan because he was elected as a KMT-nominated legislator at large. The wily Wang brought the case to court, arguing that the case was of a national importance (as it was) and the leadership of the legislature should not be subject to the arbitrary whims of a the KMT chairman. He won an injunction, allowing him to keep his seat, and the court later ruled in his favor. Ma Ying-jeou’s popularity began to take a huge nosedive around this time; how much of that we can credit to Wang Jin-pyng and his sympathy-inducing appeals to news cameras is up for debate.
Largely shielded by the walls of the Legislative Yuan, Wang was brought out into the national spotlight again almost exactly one year ago, when students Lin Fei-fan 林飛帆 and Chen Wei-ting 陳為廷 led the charge into the legislature building, which they and their fellow protesters occupied for three weeks to speak out against the cross-strait trade-in-services agreement and its forced passage during a chaotic legislative session. Regardless of whether you support the Sunflowers, it’s certain that the situation could have been ended immediately if police removed the students from the building. They did not, chiefly because Wang Jin-pyng did not let them.
The Sunflower situation was thoroughly embarrassing to Ma, and Wang doubtlessly relished in it. When Ma called an emergency meeting at his office with the premier and the legislative president – a desperate and unusual move for Taiwan’s normally aloof leadership – Wang did not show up at the designated time. Instead, he sent a single-page fax explaining the issue was one for the Legislative Yuan to handle and had nothing to do with the executive branch. (As I recall, he was supposed to be at the Presidential Office at 8. He sent his fax at 8:15.) Only when Wang decided enough damage had been done did he meet with Sunflower leaders and in almost no time at all negotiate an end to the historic protest.
Whether Wang is true-blue or green-blooded is hard to say for sure. Over his long career, he has been painted as a crooked protector for politicians from any party dipping their hands into the public cookie jar. Peng Ming-hui 彭明輝, a retired engineering professor at Tsing Hua University and respected commentator, said this of Wang: “Wang Jin-pyng may do many terrible things behind people’s backs, but he respects the will of the people more than Ma Ying-jeou does.” (王金平雖然在人後做了許多壞事，但其較馬英九更尊重民意)
In the end, Wang’s political views and platform are as murky as his closed-door dealings. What nobody can deny is that he is clever, well spoken, and even affable. And all the signs point to a presidential run despite his advanced age. He has artfully dodged questions about a run by the media, leaving the country to wonder if he will take up the flag for 2016. At a speech at Taipei University of Science and Technology this Thursday, he championed the popular issue of constitutional amendments and blasted the current system for giving the power to the president but all the liability to the premier. Talking to the students, he said cryptically: “It’s unavoidable that my appearance has changed a lot (over the years), but my mindset is: I’m still young and capable, and I want to make more contributions to the people of this nation. In this youthful naivety, I will never flinch.” (我的容貌有多大改變那是難免，但是反正我的心態如果說，我還是年輕我還是有能力做事情，要為國家人民來做奉獻，這份赤子之心不要有任何退縮。)
He is a very different mold from Ma and the KMT leaders of years past, but whether for legitimate or other reasons, he has just what the KMT needs coming off its bitter defeat last year: friends all across Taiwan’s treacherous political landscape. He may be the most treacherous of them all.
