The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday staged the their final weekend rallies before Saturday's mayoral elections in Kaohsiung, which neither believes it can afford to lose.
As the electorate structure in Taipei has long been in the KMT's favor, Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華), an executive member of the Taipei Society, said that DPP candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) is facing an uphill battle in the capital and the fate of the election is unlikely to have much impact on the political landscape.
When President Chen Shui-bian (
PHOTO: KE YU-HAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Chen had a better showing in his re-election bid in 1998 -- amassing nearly 46 percent of the ballots -- but he still lost to the KMT challenger, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who collected more than 51 percent of the votes.
In Kaohsiung, the DPP stands a better chance of winning because the DPP and KMT are evenly-matched in strength there, Ku said.
In the 1998 Kaohsiung mayoral election, Hsieh won the poll by securing nearly 49 percent of the ballots, narrowly beating the KMT's Wu Den-yih (
In the previous election in 1994, Wu convincingly defeated the DPP's Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) gaining 54 percent of votes to the latter's 39 percent.
As both the DPP and KMT are embroiled in corruption scandals, whoever wins the Kaohsiung electionon Saturday will feel overjoyed like "giving wings to a tiger," Ku said.
"The DPP is under a lot of pressure to win the Kaohsiung election because if it loses, it will give the public the impression that it is going downhill following last year's disappointing performance in the county commissioner and city mayor elections," he said.
The DPP received more than 42 percent of the votes, while the KMT polled about 51 percent. In the previous election in 2001, the DPP acquired 45 percent of the ballots, while the KMT took only 35 percent.
Although DPP Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Chen Chu (陳菊) may benefit from the resources offered by the DPP-governed Kaohsiung City Government, the corruption scandals involving President Chen and his aides may deliver a significant blow to her campaign, Ku said.
If the DPP wins both the Kaohsiung and Taipei elections, Ku said President Chen might take advantage of the opportunity to push for more reform initiatives in a bid to secure the support base and win the support of swing voters for next year's legislative elections and the next presidential poll.
The political climate may remain stable if the DPP wins in Kaohsiung but loses in Taipei, Ku said. If that happens, among the top issues the DPP will have to tackle after the elections will be the relationship between President Chen and Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌).
Su has been criticized for making little effort to disguise his wish to draw a line between himself and the president and for his ambition to run in the presidential election in 2008.
If the DPP loses both the Kaoshiung and Taipei elections, Ku said he expected to see a major reshuffle in the political line-up as DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun may follow party precedent and step down. Su would also likely be replaced.
Yang Tai-shun (楊泰順), a professor of political science at Chinese Culture University, said that the DPP is determined to win the Kaohsiung election because it is a battle that President Chen cannot afford to lose for fear he would be blamed for the party's defeat.
Yang said that he expected to see DPP legislators adopt dramatic measures to save their own political careers if the DPP loses both the Kaohsiung and Taipei polls.
"A defeat in Kaohsiung would symbolizes the DPP's loss of its support base in the south and a beginning of a lamer-than-lame-duck situation for President Chen," Yang said.
In a bid to win next year's legislative election, Yang said that DPP legislators were likely to distance themselves from President Chen and it is not impossible that they could launch a fourth recall motion to dismiss him.
If the DPP wins the Kaohsiung election but loses Taipei, the triumph in the southern city could give President Chen an enormous boost and he might use it as an opportunity to replace Su.
If the DPP wins the Kaohsiung and Taipei elections, Yang said he expected to see the DPP adopt more conservative cross-strait policies and push for more extreme constitutional reform in a bid to court die-hard pro-independence supporters.
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:
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