President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday secured a second four-year term in office, ending the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) hope for a return to power.
Ma won re-election with more than 6.8 million votes, leading his DPP challenger, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) — who garnered more than 6 million votes — by about 800,000 votes.
According to the figures released by the Central Election Commission (CEC) after the vote counting process was completed shortly before 10pm, Ma received 6,891,139 votes, or 51.6 percent of the total votes; Tsai won 6,093,578 votes, or 45.63 percent of the total; while the People First Party’s James Soong (宋楚瑜) took 369,588 votes, or 2.77 percent of the total votes cast.
Photo: Toshifumi Kitamura, AFP
The voter turnout was 74.38 percent, with 13,452,016 of the 18,086,455 qualified voters casting their votes, CEC figures showed.
Central Election Commission Chairwoman Chang Po-ya (張博雅) announced the numbers immediately after the vote-counting process was completed at a press conference at the Vote Counting and Information Center in Taipei.
“The figures will be finalized at a CEC meeting on Jan. 19,” Chang said. “After the commission confirms the numbers, we will publish the official results.”
Photo: Patrick Lin, AFP
Although Ma won, the total number of votes he received dropped by more than 767,000, from 7,658,724 in 2008, when he received 58.45 percent of the total vote.
On the other hand, votes for the DPP’s presidential candidate increased by 648,000 from 5,445,239 votes in 2008, a growth of 4.05 percent.
Speaking before thousands of jubilant supporters at his national campaign headquarters in Taipei, Ma said his cross-strait policies had resonated with voters.
GRAPHIC: TT
“They gave us support for our policy to put aside differences with the mainland [China], to search for peace and turn it into business opportunities,” he said.
“This is not Ma Ying-jeou’s personal victory, but one for the Taiwanese people. It’s also a victory for our direction toward a clean government, prosperity and peace,” he said.
“I want to thank everyone for your support that has given me the opportunity to achieve the changes Taiwan needs in another four years [in office]. I will never let you down,” he added.
Ma’s re-election is set to be seen in Beijing as a big victory for Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), who has moved away from China’s previous policy of repeatedly threatening Taiwan with war and instead has tried to woo Taiwanese by showing the economic benefits of closer ties.
There was no immediate reaction from Beijing on the election results.
Tsai conceded defeat at a press conference in New Taipei City (新北市) soon after Ma spoke to his supporters.
Tsai congratulated Ma on his victory and offered to resign immediately as DPP chairperson, saying that she took full responsibility for the loss.
“It was never easy to challenge an incumbent president. We didn’t do well enough in central and northern Taiwan. I am sorry that I have let our supporters down,” Tsai said.
“I know everyone is sad about the result. It’s OK to cry,” she added. “It is OK to feel depressed and disappointed, but don’t be frustrated and don’t give up. We still need to fight for Taiwan with optimism.”
Tsai urged Ma to listen to the people’s voice in his second term and despite his victory, she still thinks that a domestic consensus is essential before engaging in any further negotiations with Beijing.
She expressed her gratitude to her supporters, saying that their determination for reform should be carried on and that the DPP would be back in the future.
This was the second time Soong has run for president, following his initial bid in 2000, when he received 4,664,932 votes — 36.8 percent of the total votes at the time — and was the candidate with the second- highest number of votes.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS