As the dust finally settled around the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential nominations last month, the fight between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has begun.
Polls conducted by media outlets on April 27, the day the nominations were officially announced, showed Tsai entering the race with an advantage over Ma. With Ma long struggling in the polls, many think Tsai stands a good chance of becoming Taiwan’s first female president.
The KMT government has committed a wide range of bureaucratic blunders and policy missteps that have been widely criticized. Ma’s management style has also been critiqued for being authoritarian and opaque. More importantly, despite persistent crowing about economic numbers, few Taiwanese have felt the economic recovery where it counts. Unemployment is still high and salaries remain stagnant. Ma’s cross-strait policy worries many who fear the repercussions of potential political negotiations with Beijing.
With these factors and Ma’s low popularity levels, Tsai could theoretically take the January poll.
However, the better question may not be whether Tsai can win, but is she capable of doing so?
Considered an “atypical” politician, the 55-year-old London School of Economics graduate has led the DPP to a string of successes since September 2009, when the party won a legislative by-election in Yunlin for its first electoral victory since Tsai became its leader. Her mellow temperament and practical approach has won over many moderates who were turned off by the nationalistic fear-mongering of former DPP president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Yet, personal appeal is not enough. Nor can the DPP rely on government blunders and economic hardship to drive voters into its fold. Ma’s policies may be worrying, but no one wants to relive the tensions of the Chen era. Indeed, one realistic analysis says that to win re-election, Ma needs only to minimize KMT mistakes and continue painting the DPP as a bunch of divided troublemakers bent on holding the nation hostage to a hopeless cross-strait policy.
Circumstances, therefore, will not decide the presidency; Tsai will have to earn it.
Above all, this requires that she and the party act decisively to limit vulnerability to KMT attacks. Thanks to former premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) gracious concession after losing the DPP primary, the potential for party disunity has been blunted. Commentators have also played up the virtues of internal debate within the DPP as more democratic and less prone to error than the KMT’s top-down approach.
DPP inexperience in governing is also open to criticism and this will only increase now that political neophyte Tsai is the candidate. Here too, the party has moved to pre-empt attacks, including on Tsai’s thin political resume, with advocates pointing out that as a new face she carries little political baggage and that she has balanced her inexperience with a strong support staff. By instituting a “10-year policy platform,” Tsai has also sought to give the DPP greater breadth as a potential ruling party.
The need for a wider policy platform, however, infers the elephant in the room — Tsai’s China policy — which is her greatest liability given that her party identifies with Taiwan independence. This, more than anything, will determine her viability as a candidate.
Providing credible assurances that an elected DPP administration will not mean a return to Chen-era gridlock will also be Tsai’s greatest test of leadership. To accomplish this, she must convince voters that a DPP government will continue to advance relations with China. She must also persuade the deep-green elements within her party to hold their tongues on the sovereignty issue.
Accomplish these things and Tsai will earn the confidence she seeks.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US