Although this year's Taipei mayoral election reaches its climax in just five days, the atmosphere remains lukewarm in comparison to that of the 1998 contest.
Unlike the mayoral election four years ago, this time around, a lukewarm atmosphere lingers despite daily attacks launched by DPP contender Lee Ying-yuan (
Chin Heng-wei (
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
For starters, Chin said, the lukewarm atmosphere of this year's election can be attributed to the fact that the mayor seat is also up for grabs in Kaohsiung City. In fact, DPP incumbent Frank Hsieh (
"Not being in the place of opposition party, the DPP's negative campaigning, to a certain degree, is not as effective as it used to be," Chin said.
Chin pointed out that the rather stand-offish electoral atmosphere in the Taipei mayoral campaign can be attributed to apparent "downplaying" by Ma's camp, Chin said.
"The less intense the electoral atmosphere becomes, the more advantageous it is as far as Ma Ying-jeou's re-election bid is concerned," Chin told the Taipei Times.
A heated electoral battle stimulates voters to reconsider "which of the candidates best deserves their votes," he said.
Keeping it calm
The Ma camp is aware of the current state of the electoral atmosphere in Taipei, and has successfully managed to keep things toned down, thus forcing Lee to struggle, Chin said.
Although Lee has proposed quite a few innovative ideas for Taipei City, they seem not to have been received warmly by Taipei citizens because, Chin said, they do not expect much of their municipal facilities.
"If Taipei citizens had been demanding and placing importance on city construction, Ma wouldn't have beaten Chen Shui-bian [in 1998], who already had experience and political achievement in Taipei," Chin said.
Image of an idol
"One of the reasons that Ma continues to enjoy a lead in polls despite the number of visionary proposals presented by Lee is that Taipei citizens demand no municipal construction. They want a spokesperson instead," he said.
"Taipei citizens view Ma in a favorable light. He practices moderate politics and maintains an idol-like image," Chin said.
Chin pointed out that high viewer ratings of the two televised debates indicate that underneath the seemingly calm electoral atmosphere, most Taipei citizens still do care about the election.
Chiu Hei-yuan (
"The DPP won the legislative election last December because voters wanted to give it another chance," Chiu said.
"However, with on-going social problems remaining unsolved, Taiwan's sluggish economy and the like, many voters, which include those in the middle range and even some DPP die-hards, have become disheartened with the DPP administration," Chiu added.
"All of these [factors] haunt the ruling party's campaign for Lee," Chiu told the Taipei Times.
Therefore, no matter how much effort Lee puts into his campaign, the electoral atmosphere has not attracted a great deal of attention "because the overall political climate has somewhat cooled voters' enthusiasm. This has thus indirectly hurt Lee's bid for the Taipei mayoral seat," he said
Chiu suggested that one reason Lee has found it difficult to win the acceptance of Taipei citizens is that he has been hand-picked by Chen.
Chiu said that although Ma had initially declined KMT Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) invitation to run in the 1998 Taipei mayoral election, Ma eventually accepted, making an independent decision.
"Lee, however, didn't become a Taipei mayoral candidate on his own accord, but was called up by his party," Chiu said.
"Lee now might be wholeheartedly into the campaign game for his mayoral bid," Chiu said. "[But] the fact that he didn't step out on his own in the first place might turn off some voters."
Chiu further commented that it might have been a mistake for Lee's camp to play the "president card."
"It makes it seem as if the Taipei mayoral election is a prelude to Chen's presidential re-election bid in 2004, rather than a campaign for Lee's current mayoral bid," he said.
Hong-kong feet
"Such an impression is especially apparent when Chen, on several occasions campaigning for Lee, touched upon topics such as [Ma's] Hong-Kong feet versus Lee's `Taiwan feet,' and calling on Ma to promise that he [Ma] would not run in the 2004 presidential election," Chiu said.
But given that elections by nature are unpredictable, one can assume that there will still be some degree of heating-up in these last five days before voters go to polls.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater