Despite predictions from most political observers that "celebrity candidates" would not win many votes, most of the first-time celebrity candidates were elected in yesterday's Taipei City councilor elections.
Among yesterday's 52 elected councilors, all five so-called celebrity politicians were elected, which pundits said could be a sign that "media politics" is likely to have an increasing influence in future elections.
According to Emile Sheng (
In Taipei's first constituency, the PFP's Wang Yu-cheng (
A New Party candidate, Chang Chung-tian (
Another winner in Taipei for the New Party was Hou Kuan-chiung (
In last year's legislative elections, the pro-unification New Party won only one legislative seat, in Kinmen, with 0.44 percent of the vote. All seven sitting lawmakers from the party, including Hsieh Chi-ta (
This time, facing its first election since that defeat, the New Party played it safe and nominated six candidates for the Taipei City councilor elections and just one in Kaohsiung City.
Yesterday's election, in which five of its nominees were elected, showed that the party's nominating strategy appeared to have worked.
Actor Ou-yang Lung (
In the same constituency, another PFP politician fresh on the scene, Wang Shin-yi (
Still, a few of the stars-turned-politicians failed to impress voters yesterday.
For example, the DPP's Aboriginal candidate for the one Aboriginal seat, Chen Yi-hsin (
Hsieh Chien-hui (
Wang Fang-ping (
"No matter how many votes we received, we think we won the election, since we were able to give a voice to [one of] society's difficulties in this campaign," Wang said in a press release last night.
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