A Thing of the Past?

* With the clock ticking, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) have yet to reached an agreement on forming a combined ticket for the upcoming presidential election. There is plenty of blame to go around for the impasse. Besides both parties want its nominee to be atop the ticket, lack of trust and incongruence on some major policies, e.g. cross-Strait relations, are the major obstacles holding back the planned union.

* It's widely acknowledged that "politics makes strange bedfellow." There were past attempts at cross-party collaboration, most notably in the 2004 presidential race when KMT's Lien Chan joined forces with People First Party's (PFP) James Soong, which did not lead to a victory but the eventual demise of the PFP.

* Judging from the past, the TPP, of course, has been cautious and measured in the inter-party negotiations during the last few weeks. The KMT, on the other hand, has not moved the needle much with an adamant demand that its nominee, Hou You-yi, must lead the ticket. However, with mounting pressure from the grassroots, the negotiations have intensified in recent days, as the deadline for submitting party nominations to the Central Election Commission (CEC) is November 24.

* There is no indication that the KMT-TPP union is imminent, but if they run separate campaigns, it could be an early, and easy, victory for the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) William Lai. Nobody in either KMT or the TPP would want to bear the responsibility of that outcome, but neither has shown much willingness to meet the other side halfway.

* The next 48 hours will determine if the proposed cross-party collaboration would iron itself out eventually. While party leaders are politically calculating, the 2024 presidential election could pronounce the fate of major parties, and the role each will play, in Taiwan's divisive and highly emotional political landscape, at least until the next presidential race in 2028.