With election day less than two weeks away, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is trying to turn the tables on the pan-blue camp by harshly attacking the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its candidates for being corrupt.
The negative campaign strategy is tied in with DPP heavyweights' support on the campaign trail, with the overall goal of reversing the party's flagging fortunes and ensuring that the DPP grabs eight to 11 local government seats, according to party officials and political observers.
Because of the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) scandal involving former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Chen Che-nan (
PHOTO: CNA
To try to reverse hose poll trends, President Chen Shui-bian (
"President Chen's juicy truck speeches inspired passion in traditional supporters and will drive them to vote for the DPP on election day, according to our recent polls," DPP secretary-general Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) said. "The most important thing for the DPP right now is to urge our traditional supporters to come out and vote. It's the key to winning."
Lee said that although some DPP supporters were disappointed at the party's involvement in the KRTC scandal, they would never vote for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Therefore, Lee said, the DPP has planned a succession of large-scale campaign rallies in the last two weeks to get core supporters to vote, in part by persuading them that the party will mend its ways.
To achieve this, the DPP has prepared a three-pronged campaign strategy, said DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsan (
First, the party is hammering away at the fact that KMT's retired high-ranking officials still enjoy the 18 percent preferential interest rate for civil servants. The DPP aims to use this issue to highlight the KMT's privileged culture and warn voters that the KMT's party-state system is unfortunately still alive and well. This issues has already received positive feedback farmers and laborers, Cheng said.
The second tactic is to expose the KMT's individual candidate's corruption cases to remind voters of these candidates' integrity problems, Cheng said.
For example, in Taipei County, DPP candidate Luo Wen-chia (羅文嘉) has hammered away at his rival, the KMT's Chou His-wei (周錫瑋), who used his power as a legislator to erase a NT$12 million (US$449,210) debt owed to the Taiwan Business Bank. In Taichung City, DPP candidate Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has attacked Taichung Mayor Jason Hu's (胡志強) for receiving too generous a pension. In Taichung County, DPP candidate Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) exposed the KMT's sitting commissioner Huang Chung-shen (黃仲生) for issuing 100 permits to allow illegal gambling video arcades to operate in Taichung County. In Chunghua County, KMT candidate Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) was suspected of involvement in corrupt procurements for the Taiwan Railway Administration.
All of these cases have effectively drawn voters attention away from the central government's shortcoming and back to local candidates' ability, personality and leadership, while reminding voters of the possibility of the revival of the KMT's "black gold politics," Cheng said.
"Our exposures are backed up with proof, unlike the KMT's indiscriminate libel," Cheng said. "We have tried hard to focus the elections back on local government affairs and we believe that voters will eventually realize it is a local election and competent leaders are what they want."
In this regard, the DPP estimates that it will grab at least eight to 11 seats on Dec. 3 and that it will not necessarily lose, as many have predicted, Lee said.
The third campaign tactic that has proved effective is to highlight the KMT's cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The massive parade to be held by the DPP on Nov. 27 is themed "defending Taiwan and protesting collaboration with China." President Chen Shui-bian launched the theme in his speeches on Friday evening in Nantou County, saying "the KMT and the CCP are the same party."
Although the DPP's overall election situation is not as bleak as it may seem, a measure of the DPP's overall performance on Dec. 3 will be whether the DPP can secure Taipei County, according to Hsu Yung-ming (
"It will be hard to say that the DPP has won the elections -- even if it achieves its goal of winning 11 seats or more -- if its loses Taipei County," Hsu said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods