On the eve of the officially sanctioned presidential campaign, the Hakka (客家) issue has come to the fore again. In his determination to win over the Hakka voters, the KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰) has pledged to bring into being a Commission on Hakka Affairs at the national level, to legislate an Ethnic Culture and Language Protection Law, and to promote adequate Hakka elites in the central government to reflect their numerical strength once he is elected.
For months, the Hakkas, who constitute roughly 15% of the total population, have been deeply alienated from both the DPP and the KMT for the apparent neglect, if not humiliation, during their presidential nominations respectively.
In the view of the Hakka supporters of the DPP, if Chen Shue-bien (陳水扁) had sincerely sought to integrate the Hakkas, he could have at least chosen the Hakka Hsu Hsin-lian (許信良) as his vice-president candidate. Earlier, Hsu, the former party chair, who had painstakingly coordinated the magistrate nomination among the contentious factions and successfully led the landslide elections in 1997, was unduly refused a fair opportunity to run a second term and decided to exit disappointedly.
Superficially, Hsu was thwarted for his tarnished chameleon image of pro-unification and awkward articulation in speech. But the Hakkas tend to perceive the episode as yet another indicator of Hoklo (鶴佬) chauvinism dated back to the armed feuds in the Ching rule, giving that fact that Chen has later incorporated Hsu's functionalist approach toward China into his agenda.
Facing Hakka's grumbling complaint, the DPP seemed aloof as if the Hakkas have never been their unequivocal constituencies. Some pro-DPP intellectuals went so far as to warn in public that the Hakkas ought not to keep on clamoring, otherwise, the Hoklos in the majority would be provoked, which only further exasperated Hakka's already relative deprivation.
Some Hakkas initially expected their chieftain Wu Buo-hsiung (吳伯雄) would become Lien Chan's running mate after James Soong (宋楚瑜) had shown his intention to defect from the KMT. Apparently reluctant to pose as a Hoklo-Hakka coalition against the Mainlanders, President Lee Ten-hui (李登輝) proclaimed that he himself was primordially a Hakka from his paternal lineage, and thus disillusioned their fantastic aspiration.
The Hakkas were additionally slapped in the face after Wu was coerced, without at least cosmetic co-optation, not to ally himself with Soong. The KMT might be in the right that Wu was not so much a local baron than the helmsman of the Hakkas. However, the question of whether or not their wounds will be eventually healed by Lien's recent compromising gesture remains to be seen.
While the New Party has persistently curried favor with the Hakkas, curiously enough, Soong has also received the most fervent support from them so far. By no means Mailander-lovers, the majority of Hakkas, as an ethnic minority, seem to have long enjoyed their quasi-alliance with any numerically weak later-comers. And yet, what seemed to have won their hearts is Soong's seemingly undeceiving efforts to speak in Hakka impulsively during compaigns, among other things.
Even though the current magistrates of the Hsin-ju (新竹) and Tao-yuan (桃園) counties are from the DPP, Chen would be happy if he is able to run the second in either county even with his last-minute nicely tailored Hakka White Paper. No wonder Chen is desperate to plead that he would be elected as long as no less than three thousands of Hakkas vote for him.
At the heart of the Hakka voting behavior is their identity crisis. In searching for collective identity, some Hakkas are still not confident of their Taiwanese identity. Moreover, while insisting on proficiency in Hakka language as the sole criterion of being Hakka, the size of this minority group is destined to decrease confronted by the double assimilative pressure from the official Mandarin language policy and the Hoklo influence in everyday life.
To allure the Hakka voters, the presidential candidates should endeavor to ponder over the following questions wholeheartedly: Who are the Hakkas? And what are the Hakks. Likewise, the Hakkas must also reflect themselves candidly: Are we Hakkas diasporas residing in Taiwan or rather Hakka-Taiwanese? Or more essentially, is there any embryo pan-Hakka solidarity in the making yet?
In the end, contemporary Taiwanese politicians seem exceedingly competent mathematicians.