Before Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) withdrew from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on Aug. 9, he had a long history with the party.
He had been an active member of the party’s now-disbanded New Tide faction, of which Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) was also a member.
He served as a DPP councilor of the then-Taiwan provincial consultative council between 1994 and 1999, during which time he was elected as deputy convener of the DPP’s caucus within the council.
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His political career took off after that with his election as a DPP legislator in 1999.
With strong support from the faction and grassroots DPP supporters, he moved on to pursue higher political endeavors.
He beat former KMT legislator Wu Kuang-hsun (吳光訓) in a landslide victory when he first ran for Kaohsiung County commissioner in 2001, and then won re-election over current KMT caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世), by almost 110,000 votes in 2005.
Lamenting on the once close bond between Yang and Chen, which has been split by the election, Master Chang Lu (常律法師), founder of the Buddhist Chengte Education and Cultural Institution, said it was the “terror of politics.”
Chang Lu recalled that nine years ago Chen and Yang came together to visit him and they addressed each other affectionately by “brother” and “sister.”
“It’s quite sad now that they’ve lacerated their sister-brother bond because of the election,” Lu said.
Nicknamed the “Southern Little Giant” (南方小巨人), Yang had a smooth political career until the county’s mountain townships were battered by Typhoon Morakot in August last year, leaving 398 people of the Siaolin Village (小林) buried under mudslides, while other Aboriginal communities in Namasiya (那瑪夏) and Liouguei (六龜) townships were almost wiped out.
Yang departed for a trip to Europe several days before the typhoon and returned to the country on Aug. 9 — the day after the typhoon hit Taiwan, and he was bombarded by KMT county councilors because of his absence during the day of the typhoon.
This was the first and by far the most serious setback in Yang’s political career.
Apart from that, Yang has made quite an effort promoting arts and culture in the county, including the construction of the Wei Wu Ying Center for the Arts — a national-level art venue — that opened on April 7 in Fongshan (鳳山), which brings art troupes to the county’s remote townships and nurtures local artistic groups.
His county administration was also the first local government in the nation to launch a campaign to plant 1 million trees within its borders in 2004.
He has also been aggressive in terms of attracting businesses to invest in the county.
Nevertheless, a vote captain — a person responsible for local campaigns for a candidate by following community registers and locking in votes to make it easy to estimate the number of votes prior to the election — of Yang’s, who has been helping him with campaigning, said under condition of anonymity that Yang tends to play it safe, appearing to be less adventurous than Chen in terms of pushing development in the greater Kaohsiung area.
The commissioner seemed to put himself in an awkward position and risked losing support from grassroots DPP supporters like Lee Hsiao-wei’s (李筱薇) family, which supported Yang in the 2005 county commissioner election, the day he announced his bid for mayor of Greater Kaohsiung.
“My father now thinks Yang doesn’t have any class or style because he started to speak ills about Chen Chu after he was defeated by her in the DPP primary,” Lee said. “He also started to get close to Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] politicians, which to my father demonstrates the inconsistency of his political ideals.”
Lee was referring to Yang’s recent visits to senior pan-blue politicians’ homes and People First Party Chairman James Soong’s (宋楚瑜) public endorsement of the commissioner last month.
Yang, 54, is undeterred by the criticisms, however, insisting on taking what he calls “the middle way.”
Additional reporting by staff writer
Our series of profiles of the candidates in the Nov. 27 special municipality elections continues tomorrow with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) mayoral candidate for Greater Kaohsiung, Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順).
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