With the seven-in-one elections just four months away, top Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers acknowledge that they face a daunting task and said they are focusing their efforts on retaining control over cities and counties that the party currently controls.
The prevailing mood in the party is downcast, KMT officials who wished to remain anonymous said, mainly due to disenchanted voters unhappy with President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration and public dissatisfaction with rising food, consumer and utilities prices and stagnant wages.
The KMT currently holds power in 15 cities and counties: Taipei, New Taipei, Greater Taichung, Keelung, Hsinchu and Chiayi cities, and Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Nantou, Changhua, Taitung, Penghu, Kinmen and Lienchiang counties.
Taoyuan County is to be upgraded at the end of the year to become the nation’s sixth special municipality.
It is the KMT’s priority to retain its hold in three of the special municipalities — Taipei, New Taipei City and Greater Taichung — but that has become an increasingly difficult task, party sources said, adding that the only firm prospect is New Taipei City, where incumbent Eric Chu (朱立倫) is running for re-election.
Taipei is a traditional stronghold for the pan-blue camp, but surveys by different media outlets show that KMT candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) has fallen behind Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who is representing the cross-party opposition alliance.
In Taoyuan County, a corruption scandal involving former Taoyuan deputy commissioner Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) has cut down the KMT’s initial massive lead to only a slight edge.
Although the KMT is still ahead in public polls in Taoyuan County, party officials said that if it loses the lead, it would be an important sign of change.
Party sources added that the situation in Greater Taichung is also very worrisome, as Taichung Mayor Jason Hu’s (胡志強) 13-year tenure has seemingly become a burden. In public polls, Hu has consistently lagged Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), the challenger from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
KMT officials acknowledged that Hu is trailing by a considerable margin and said the party is trying to consolidate local pan-blue factions, especially in the districts which made up the former Taichung County.
In Keelung City, the KMT announced on Wednesday last week that it was nullifying the candidacy of Keelung City Council Speaker Huang Ching-tai (黃景泰), who is under investigation for corruption.
Party insiders said the move was to stop the bleeding, because it would not reflect well on the party to have photographs of Huang with Lien or with Chu, if the party wants a northern Taipei sweep.
Outside of the special municipalities, Yunlin County is as a possible gain, with the party hopeful of wrestling control from the DPP, KMT officials said.
The KMT has nominated Chang Li-shan (張麗善), sister of former county commissioner Chang Jung-wei (張榮味), in a bid to rally local political factions together, but more grassroots campaign is needed to solidify factional support, sources said.
Chiayi City is the only electorate region in southern Taiwan under KMT control, but the party is finding it hard to consolidate party support because of factional divisions. If the party’s push for consolidation fails, it is likely to cede political control over the city to the pan-green camp.
Meanwhile, corruption investigations have tainted the top offices of Changhua County and Nantou County, giving the DPP a fair chance of winning the races there, political observers have said.
However, KMT sources said the party believes it still holds a substantial lead in Nantou County and that efforts to consolidate support in Changhua County have yielded positive results.
As for southern Taiwan, KMT officials see very little chance of winning given the strong support for the pan-green camp in Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung.
As for the other regions, while the KMT faces difficult battles in Keelung City and Chiayi City, it still enjoys pan-blue majority support in Hsinchu City, as well as Hsinchu, Miaoli, Nantou and Taitung counties, and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang electoral districts.
It is a general consensus that the KMT could claim a “major victory” if it could hang on to all its incumbent regional seats, party officials said.
“If we lose Chiayi City, it does not really constitute a defeat. However, if we lose one of the special municipalities, it is a big defeat. If we lose more than one special municipality, then it is a massive defeat for the party,” an unnamed party official said.
With Ma’s tanking approval rating, KMT insiders said they do not have a have a political star to lead the election campaign.
“Right now, the mood is rather gloomy within the party. It is like an army going into battle without a commander. The only way we can boost our chances of winning is if pan-blue supporters are aware of the crisis and danger we are facing,” KMT officials said, hoping that this would drive its supporters to unite and vote for its candidates.
Translated by staff writer Jason Pan
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching