It’s Saturday night and on a massive stage, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) mayoral candidate for the soon-to-be-renamed Sinbei City, Eric Chu (朱立倫), stands beaming, arm held high giving the hundreds-strong crowd a thumbs up. Standing beside the mayoral candidate is President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), clad in look-alike jeans and a similar campaign vest, both arms held high and his fists clenched in a pose of victory.
Stirring the crowd, Ma praises the KMT darling, considered a rising star in his party. Not only is Chu confident and righteous, Ma said, but with Chu at the helm, “the public can finally be at ease.”
“He is trustworthy and admired,” Ma said. “If Chu is elected mayor, it will not only be Sinbei City’s good fortune, but the good fortune of Taiwan as a whole.”
GRAPHIC: TT
The first KMT candidate to be described with such eloquence since the president, the 49-year-old clean-cut, articulate and boyish-looking one-time professor is the image of the KMT’s future generation of political leaders.
For Chu, running in Sinbei City was the logical next step in a political career that has been largely marked by smooth sailing. Born to a political family — his father was a Taoyuan County councilor — he acquired a master’s and then a doctorate in accounting from New York University after graduating from National Taiwan University. Returning to Taiwan, he secured a professorship at his alma mater before being appointed to a number of government posts.
Chu’s wife, Kao Wan-chien (高婉倩), whom he met as a student in New York, is also well connected politically, her father having once served as a KMT legislator and prior to that, as a Tainan County commissioner. Chu’s brother-in-law, Kao Su-po (高思博), is another one-time lawmaker and was appointed by Ma as minister without portfolio in May 2008, a year before Chu was given the vice premier post.
Chu’s connections, along with his high governance ratings in the magazines CommonWealth and Global Views, have marked him as an important figure in the new cadre of “middle-age” leaders groomed by the KMT. His party colleagues have nicknamed him, along with Ma and Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), as part of an iron triangle called “Ma-Li-Chiang,” a play on the Chinese characters in their names.
Steering clear of ideological rhetoric, Chu has wide public support with his policies on “beef” — his term for election promises that will have direct public benefits. His campaign includes rousing, populist ideas of an aggressive MRT expansion, economic development and community housing.
“We believe these are policies voters can identify with and are looking for,” said office manager Chen Kuao-jun (陳國君), the former editor-in-chief at ETTV recruited to help Chu’s campaign. “After all, this is an election for a mayor. The people of Sinbei City want to see what the candidates have to offer in terms of planning and ideas for this city.”
In commercials on TV, radio and the Internet, Chu has pledged to start construction of a three-ring MRT system, promising to open at least one line per year and the completion of 10 new MRT lines in Sinbei City over the next decade. He also said he would develop the city into an international tourism destination, while creating more jobs through local initiatives.
Asked how Chu’s policies differed from his election opponent, who launched similar proposals, members of his well-funded campaign pointed to the dozens of ads tacked on Taipei area buses that proclaim “I can do it,” beside a smiling picture of the KMT candidate.
More people believe Chu will fulfill his election promises, campaign spokesperson Lin Chieh-yu (林芥佑) said.
A political veteran who served two terms as Taoyuan County commissioner and before that as a KMT legislator, Chu is no stranger to the campaign trail. He has waged an election campaign that has been characterized as stable and consistent. Far from shying away from microphones and cameras, as his opponent, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Sinbei mayoral candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), has sometimes been accused of doing, he embraces them, relishing the opportunity to explain his side of the story.
His rapid-fire responses, often delivered within hours of stirring controversy, allowed his squeaky-clean image to emerge relatively unscathed from a series of potentially damaging exposes released one week after another by Chinese-language Next Magazine. He also doesn’t shy away from delivering stinging rebukes in public against Tsai, frequently accusing her of failing to differentiate between her candidacy and her position as DPP chairperson.
After a recent TV “debate,” during which he spoke alone to a teleprompter after Tsai failed to show up over a scheduling conflict, he said he often felt “lonely” and suggested that his opponent “did not hold the right attitude.”
Portraying himself as a figure that voters would be able to relate better with, he said at the time that people should “choose a candidate that has their heart in Sinbei City.”
A long-time supporter of Chu, a middle-aged man surnamed Lu (呂) who took part in a recent campaign rally summed it up by saying: “When [the public] sees Chu, we trust that he will stay and work hard here for four, even perhaps eight years ... Chu simply has more local administrative experience [than his opponent].”
It is also this focus on local issues that Chu hopes will capture greater numbers of undecided voters, a crucial electorate in a municipality that has alternated between KMT and DPP control for the past two decades. The nation’s most populous municipality, winning Sinbei City, currently called Taipei County, is vital to the president’s re-election bid in 2012.
Critics have raised questions on whether some government officials have been almost too enthusiastic in supporting Chu, sparking concerns that campaign speakers have violated rules governing administrative neutrality. Earlier this month, a Council of Hakka Affairs deputy minister endorsed Chu during a government-run cultural festival, leading Tsai’s campaign to call the incident “a flagrant violation.”
The accusations, while serious, appear to have failed to tarnish Chu’s image in a move that office manager Chen suggests is reflective of the public’s desire to see candidates refrain from negative attacks.
“It shows that Taiwan’s society still has some fairness,” Chen said. “When voters compare his image and governing ability with his opponent’s negative attacks, we believe they can come to their own understanding of the incidents.”
Echoing one of Ma’s election campaign slogans in 2008, Chen says that after all, “pure gold is not afraid of being put through the fire.”
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