The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered a surprisingly large defeat yesterday in a presidential election that was expected to be a neck-and-neck race as DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) failed to keep President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) from winning a second term.
Tsai, who aspired to become the first female president in Taiwan’s history, garnered 45.63 percent of the total votes, while Ma received 51.60 percent.
At a post-election press conference, Tsai conceded defeat and offered her congratulations to Ma.
Photo: Shengfa Lin, Reuters
“I respect the decision of the people and offer my congratulation to President Ma. However, I urge him to listen to the voice of the people in the next four years and not to let the public down,” she said.
Despite the DPP making progress in terms of its share of the vote and the number of seats the party claimed in the legislature, Tsai said the result showed that the party has a long way to go in central and northern Taiwan.
Saying that she took full responsibility for the loss, Tsai also announced her immediate resignation as party chairperson, before making a speech to thousands of supporters outside her campaign headquarters in Banciao District (板橋), New Taipei City (新北市).
Photo: Shengfa Lin, Reuters
“It’s unfortunate we were not able to complete the last mile. We lost the election, but we also won something — solidarity and the determination to reform. The next DPP chairperson will keep the fire of reform burning,” she told supporters, who chanted: “Stay. Stay.”
Tsai called on her supporters to stick together because “someday, we will be back again.”
The loss was another blow to the party, which lost a landslide presidential election four years ago when its presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) only garnered 41.55 percent of the total vote against Ma’s 58.45 percent.
Photo: Shengfa Lin, Reuters
The 2008 loss came after the DPP’s historic victory in 2000 by then-presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), in which the party ended the KMT’s dominance and achieved the nation’s first transfer of power. Chen also won re-election in 2004.
Tsai was able to pull the party together and she started its journey back to being a competitive party with a number of by-election victories after assuming the chairmanship in 2008 en route to her nomination as the DPP’s presidential candidate in April last year.
She was able to pick up momentum as the campaign progressed with her campaign theme, which highlighted fairness and justice, as well as social and economic issues, such as income inequality and unemployment.
The DPP predicted Tsai would win by 1 percent, or about 100,000 votes, in the hotly contested election in its last survey before the election.
Supporters began to arrive at Tsai’s national campaign headquarters in a confident mood yesterday afternoon for an open-air rally, where a giant screen was set up so people could watch the live telecast of the ballot counting, which began at 4pm.
A few hundred people packed a small area inside the headquarters to watch the telecast. The crowd cheered when the initial vote count showed Tsai leading the national tally in the first few minutes.
However, the mood failed to last after almost every television station showed Ma pulling away and increasing his lead to more than 300,000 votes after about 30 minutes.
Watching the TV broadcast, a DPP aide said he was concerned about the share of the vote of People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), whose share consistently stayed below 3 percent, about half of his support rate before the election.
“That showed that strategic voting has occurred as voters decided to ‘dump’ Soong and vote for Ma,” he said.
Another senior DPP aide, who had been monitoring the official Central Election Commission (CEC) real-time vote tally, said that the tallies shown on television did not reflect the official vote count.
According to the CEC, Ma did not pull his lead out to more than 3 percent until about 7pm, three hours after the beginning of the count, while almost all television channels showed that Ma was in the driver’s seat after the first 30 minutes.
Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) and Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲), the hosts of the DPP’s rally, tried to pump up the crowd, but their announcement of the party’s legislative election victories in local constituencies failed to brighten the mood of supporters, most of whom stood silently in a light shower.
Some young DPP staffers and volunteers hugged each other, sobbing outside the party’s headquarters long before the outcome was announced.
Meanwhile, People First Party (PFP) supporters gathered at the party’s headquarter in Taipei and cheered in consolation for PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), who lost his presidential bid and trailed far behind with 2.77 percent of the vote.
“Go, governor Soong. We are still proud of you despite the failure,” a supporter shouted.
Soong said he did not start considering joining the election until July or August last year, after feeling the need to speak out for ordinary people and improve their lives.
Soong said that his campaign lacked funds and he was thankful that the party was able to gather so many small donations from supporters.
“We accept the people’s decision,” he said.
Additional reporting by Shelley Shan
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
Taiwan's first indigenous defense submarine, the SS-711 Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), departed for its 13th sea trial at 7am today, marking its seventh submerged test, with delivery to the navy scheduled for July. The outing also marked its first sea deployment since President William Lai (賴清德) boarded the submarine for an inspection on March 19, drawing a crowd of military enthusiasts who gathered to show support. The submarine this morning departed port accompanied by CSBC Corp’s Endeavor Manta (奮進魔鬼魚號) uncrewed surface vessel and a navy M109 assault boat. Amid public interest in key milestones such as torpedo-launching operations and overnight submerged trials,
RSS