The People Choose

On March 23, 1996, the skies over Taiwan were charged with an unprecedented tension and exhilaration. On this day, twenty-one million Taiwanese would, for the first time, directly elect the head of their own nation with the ballots in their hands. Yet on the eve of this historic moment, missiles from across the strait were streaking across the heavens one after another, falling into the waters off Keelung and Kaohsiung. A test launch meant to intimidate by force, and a democracy realized through the ballot, formed upon this land the sharpest and most stirring of contrasts.

Since 1947, Taiwan's president had long been chosen indirectly by the representatives of the National Assembly, with the people having no say whatsoever. After decades of authoritarian rule, the sacrifice of countless martyrs, and a series of constitutional amendments under Lee Teng-hui's leadership, direct popular election of the president was finally settled in the constitutional revision of 1994. It meant that the highest power of the nation would, for the first time, be truly returned to the hands of every citizen. This was the ideal the Dangwai movement had dreamed of for decades, the distant shore toward which Formosa, Cheng Nan-jung, and the Wild Lily Movement had all pointed.

This first direct presidential election featured a vigorous contest among four pairs of candidates: the incumbent Lee Teng-hui with Lien Chan; the DPP's Peng Ming-min with Hsieh Tsung-min; and Lin Yang-kang with Chen Li-an, who ran after breaking with the Kuomintang. Among them, Peng Ming-min was none other than the legal scholar who had spent twenty-three years in exile for drafting the Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation; that he now returned to his homeland as a presidential candidate was itself a moving footnote to Taiwan's democratic journey. The four tickets waged fierce policy debates and rallies across the island, and the whole nation was immersed in the passion and clamor of democracy.

And yet this feast of democracy was held under the shadow of war. Viewing the direct election as a dangerous signal of a move toward independence, the authorities in Beijing conducted massive military exercises around the strait in the months before the vote and launched missiles into the waters off Taiwan — an episode known as the Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis. The stock market plunged, public anxiety surged, and some people even rushed to stockpile goods and move their assets. The United States promptly dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to the strait, demonstrating through action its resolve to preserve regional peace. Amid the howl of missiles, the people of Taiwan faced a severe test of courage and conviction.

At last the day of voting arrived. Far from shrinking before the military threats from across the strait, the people of Taiwan responded with the firmest and most dignified answer of all — a turnout as high as seventy-six percent. With calm and solemn ballots, they proclaimed to the whole world that the future of the Taiwanese people could be decided only by the Taiwanese people themselves, and that they would never submit to intimidation from without. In the end Lee Teng-hui and Lien Chan were elected with a majority of the vote, becoming the first president and vice president in Taiwan's history chosen directly by the people.

The significance of this election, completed amid raging storms, long ago surpassed the matter of victory or defeat. It marked Taiwan's formal transformation from an authoritarian system into a democratic nation with sovereignty vested in the people, completing the most crucial final step of its democratic transition. From the street cries of the Dangwai movement, to the blood and tears of the Lin family and Chen Wen-cheng, to the flames of Cheng Nan-jung and the sit-in of the wild lilies, the ideal that countless forerunners had pursued for decades finally crystallized, on this day, into the thin yet immeasurably weighty ballot held in the hands of every citizen.

The historic significance of this election lay also in how it utterly overturned the source and legitimacy of state power. Through the long authoritarian years, the ruler's power had come from the gun, from the party machine, from indirect elections monopolized by a few; the people were merely the governed, not the masters of the nation. Yet when twenty-one million people cast that ballot with their own hands for the first time, the wellspring of power returned, irreversibly, to every citizen. From then on, anyone who wished to lead this nation had to walk among the people, listen to their will, and submit to the test of the ballot, never again able to issue orders from behind the high walls of authoritarianism. This fundamental reversal in the very conception of power was the deepest inner marker of Taiwan's farewell to authoritarianism and its march toward mature democracy. More precious still, Taiwan accomplished this feat under the intimidation of missiles from across the strait — making the election not merely an internal exercise of democracy but a solemn declaration to the whole world of the Taiwanese people's pursuit of autonomy and their refusal to be swayed by any outside force.

That we can today, every four years, calmly walk into a polling station and decide with our ballots who shall lead this nation — behind that seemingly self-evident right lies a road paved by an entire generation with blood and tears, fire, and youth. The figures who stood up to vote under the shadow of missiles that year seem to echo still through history, reminding future generations that the dignity of democracy is an eternal lamp that the people of Taiwan, with unyielding courage, lit with their own hands — for themselves and for the generations to come.