Campaign Special ( Results) - North holds few surprises as vote goes to blue camp

By Cody Yiu
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Mar 21, 2004, Page 14

A man in Taipei City smokes while watching TV screens showing the election results coming in yesterday. PHOTO: CHEN TSE-MING, TAIPEI TIMES

Long a stronghold of the pan-blue camp, the north of Taiwan lived up to its reputation last night with the blues winning half a million more ballots than the greens.

In Taipei City, the pan-blue camp received 56.53 percent of the vote while the pan-green camp received 43.47 percent.

Analysts that the referendum topic had helped the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) steal some votes from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP).

"The DPP successfully pushed the presidential election to a higher level by throwing in the referendum issue. Voters in Taipei City are more aware of the issue of the future of Taiwan," said Liu Chin-hsin (劉進興), an engineering professor at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.

Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華), a sociology professor at National Chengchi University, said, however, that the pan-blue's 313 Rally in Taipei City allowed middle-class residents to vent their anger.

"To me, the 313 Rally was a rally of angry bourgeoisie," Ku said.

Ku that President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) government had not treated Taipei as the country's political center, but put the political focus elsewhere.

"Because Chen lost the Taipei City mayoral election to Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in 1998, it is rather obvious that Taipei is the KMT's stronghold.

In 1998's mayoral election, Ma won 51.1 percent of the vote while Chen won 45.9 percent.

In Taipei County, the pan-greens received 46.94 percent of the total presidential vote, while the pan-blue ticket won 53.06 percent. This result was something of a curate's egg for the DPP.

Taipei County Commissioner Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) won his commissioner election in 2001 by taking 51.31 percent of the total vote against a pan-blue candidate.

Although the pan-green camp's turnout in the presidential election was not as impressive as in the commissioner election, Chen performed much better in Taipei County than in 2000.

In 2000, Chen only won 39.11 percent of total vote in Taipei County, while this time he won close to 47 percent.

The pan-green camp had canvassed hard in the Hakka regions -- Taoyuan County, Hsinchu city and county and Miaoli County -- by setting up a Hakka TV station, promoting the Hakka language in public schools and boosting tourism.

Although in this election, the pan-blue camp still won over half of the total ballots in these regions, the DPP's tactics somewhat succeeded in winning over the Hakka population as the percentage of votes received by Chen increased this time around.

Overall, Ku felt that the DPP's win had rekindled hope for Taiwan.

"It is a clear sign of a new Taiwanese ideology, with the old ideology of the KMT being consigned to history's garbage bin," Ku said.

The northern regions of Taiwan consist of eight counties and cities: Taipei City, Taipei County, Keelung City, Ilan County, Taoyuan County, Hsinchu County, Hsinchu City and Miaoli County. The region has 7.5 million eligible voters.