Floating voters shunning ruling party, analysts say

Saturday's elections show that the DPP has lost the support of floating voters after two years in office, political observers said yesterday.

Between 5 percent and 10 percent of the DPP's votes in recent elections had come from voters who have no strong partisan preference, they said, but the outcome of Saturday's election indicated that the party has lost this support.

To attract these voters again, they said, the government must win back their trust by improving its performance.

"The only way for the DPP to win the hearts of the floating voters is to prove that the party is capable of governing and it has the guts for reform," said Emile Sheng (盛治仁), a political science professor at Soochow University.

DPP candidate Lee Ying-yuan's (李應元) resounding defeat against Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was a blow to president and DPP Chairman Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), they said.

Lee obtained only 35 percent of the vote -- a large drop from Chen's 45.9 percent in the mayoral election four years ago.

Although party officials were relieved after holding Kaohsiung, where DPP Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) won re-election and the party for the first time won the largest number of seats on the city's council, the victory was tempered by a poor showing in Taipei.

Expressing his regret, Chen said the DPP would take the party's failure in Taipei as "a wake-up call" and vowed "to listen to the people's voice with more modesty in the future in an effort to win back people's trust."

The president also pledged to boost the country's sagging economy and continue party reform.

The DPP ended five decades of KMT rule in 2000, completing the first transfer of power.

But the party's poor showing in the polls indicated that the public doubted the party's ability amid disappointment over its poor economic performance and sluggishness in pushing for reform.

"The flawed policies and President Chen's ruling style have let the people down, driving floating voters away," said Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), assistant professor of political science at National Chungcheng University.

The academic said the DPP was hurt by the policy U-turn on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant last year and the recent equivocation on reform of farmers' and fishermen's associations.

Initially the government vowed to scrap the power plant, but the pledge was dropped a few months later following opposition in the legislature.

The government was forced into another about-face a year later.

In August, the Cabinet announced plans to overhaul the credit departments of the farmers' and fishermen's associations via a risk-control mechanism, but the initiative was halted only three months later because it triggered enormous resentment from the associations' members.

Hsu said the public had lost faith in the government because of its lack of determination in pushing for reform.

To attract more floating voters, political commentators suggested that the DPP re-evaluate its relationship with the TSU, its small yet critical ally.

It is widely reported that the relatively poor showing of the TSU in the weekend election indicated that former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) popularity in the country had faded, despite Lee's hard campaigning.

The TSU nominated seven city councilor candidates in both Taipei and Kaohsiung cities, but only two in Kaohsiung were elected.