The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is cooperating with other parties in 11 challenging legislative districts known to be traditional pan-blue strongholds. It is doing this to make sure that the party’s presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), maintains her lead in the presidential election and that it wins a majority of the legislative seats in the Jan. 16 elections.
To achieve its goal of shutting out Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates in Taipei, DPP legislative candidates have formed the Capital Forward Alliance with independent candidates and members of other parties: the People First Party’s (PFP) Vivian Huang (黃珊珊); the New Power Party’s (NPP) Freddy Lim (林昶佐) and Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌); the Green Party-Social Democratic Party Alliance’s Fan Yun (范雲); and independent candidates Billy Pan (潘建志), Yang Shih-chiu (楊實秋) and Lee Ching-yuan (李慶元).
To avoid splitting the voter base between the DPP and the third-force social movement, the party has declined to nominate candidates in some districts, choosing instead to lend its support to Pan, Lim and Fan.
The DPP is also working with former KMT members Yang and Lee, as well as the PFP’s Huang, to split the pan-blue voter base.
The party has taken a step back in districts where it has traditionally been weak, and cross-party cooperation could help it win legislative seats. At the very least, it can help prevent the KMT from increasing its total number of seats, while providing a tactical link in the strategy to win both the presidency and a legislative majority.
The KMT has placed Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) at the top of its list of legislator-at-large candidates in the hope that he would campaign for the party’s district legislators. More importantly, it is hoping that if neither the KMT nor the DPP wins an outright majority, Wang, with his experience and connections in the legislature, could rally the support of independent candidates, allowing the KMT to gain a majority.
The KMT and the DPP are both strategizing, but the DPP has a more difficult task ahead. While the KMT does not care about party votes for independent candidates, the DPP wants seats for district legislators and at-large legislators appointed by party vote.
The NPP, the Social Democratic Party and the PFP are also pinning their hopes on the party vote. This means that the decision whether to split the district and party vote is an issue that could create problems.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) hit the nail on the head when he pointed to the Capital Forward Alliance members’ differing ideologies. As an election strategy, the alliance could work, as mobilization and voting for candidates are a fairly straightforward matter. However, when it comes to the party vote, it would be difficult to avoid conflicts given the different political groups’ interests.
This could also pose a challenge to the ability of the different parties to vote and promote a common agenda in the legislature. These are issues to which the DPP must give serious consideration in the run-up to the elections.
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