New Party's loss to help converge opinion on identity

The collapse of the pro-unification New Party in Saturday's elections will help converge public opinion on Taiwan's national identity, DPP legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) said yesterday.

In a symposium on the elections of lawmakers sponsored by the Taiwan Research Institute, Lin said the sudden demise of the New Party, which succeeded in returning only one lawmaker, signifies a shift of public opinion toward acknowledging Taiwan's separate identity.

The sudden emergence in politics of the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), which snapped up 13 seats in its political debut, is more evidence of the political appeal of Taiwan's sovereignty and political stability.

The DPP's sweep of counties in the south of the country in the races for magistrates and mayors suggested that voters didn't blame the ruling party for the current economic slowdown, despite these counties suffering the most in the nation's recession and accounting for the bulk of Taiwan's unemployed, Lin said.

After last year's presidential election and Saturday's elections, Lin said that Beijing should shed its unrealistic expectations for Taiwan and try to establish new working relations with the country's officials.

Another message that emerged from the elections is the strong party-orientation among local voters, which is contrary to the widely accepted notion that they are attracted more by candidates' personal merits than their political affiliation, Lin said.

Meanwhile, Fan Xitsou, director of the Institute of Taiwan Studies at Xiamen University in Fujian province, said yesterday by phone that Saturday's elections are nothing but a political shake-up among Taiwan's political parties and will not bear an influence on Taiwan's ties with China.

This is why Beijing didn't bother to comment on the elections before or after Saturday, he said. The results of the elections will certainly not change Beijing's basic principles in dealing with Taiwan, that is "separating economic affairs from political affairs," and engaging with Taiwan on the basis of "one China," Fan said.

However, Fan said, Beijing did take note of the strong anti-Beijing sentiments during the campaign and will continue applying pressure on Taiwan to stop such activities.

Officials in Beijing, however, do not believe the DPP's new mandate will strengthen its hand in dealing with China, Fan said.

The Taiwan affairs expert said the failure of the KMT was the result of it fielding too many candidates and having to contend with the division of its traditional supporters between itself and its breakaway party, the People First Party (PFP).

He predicted the KMT will have trouble making a political comeback.