A local business leader said yesterday in the wake of hotly contested local elections in which the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) gave a less-than-stellar performance that it is time for the administration to conduct soul-searching and come up with plans to improve its administrative efficiency.
Chang Ping-chao (張平沼), chairman of the General Chamber of Commerce (全國商業總會), said the KMT should examine why it has lost popularity in some cities and counties, and give serious thought as to how to improve efficiency.
Although the KMT won the mayoral or commissioner seats in 12 out of 17 cities and counties in Saturday’s elections, it lost two of its former commissioner seats and the party’s nominees only received 47.88 percent of the 4,466,403 ballots cast.
The opposition Democratic Progressive Party, meanwhile, won 1,982,914 of the votes cast, or 45.32 percent, compared with the 38.19 percent it won in the same areas in the last local elections four years ago.
Chang said the local elections had nothing to do with the KMT administration’s overall economic policy and cross-strait policy.
He attributed the KMT’s loss of support in some cities and counties mainly to the impact and implications of the global economic meltdown and the high unemployment rate since late last year, as well as the massive destruction caused by Typhoon Morakot in southern and eastern Taiwan earlier this year.
Tsai Lien-sheng (蔡練生), secretary-general of the Taipei-based Chinese National Federation of Industries (工總), said Taiwan has begun to bottom out from the economic meltdown and is now set to rebound.
“If the KMT administration steers firmly, its approval ratings will rebound soon,” Tsai said.
Meanwhile, a Dah Chang Securities (大昌證券) spokesman said that the KMT’s defeat in Yilan and Hualien counties would temporarily impact the performance of the Taiwan bourse, forecasting that the TAIEX would lose ground for at least one or two days when the market re-opens today.
The spokesman said that the election results unfolded as generally expected, while the market is now rich in funds and the global financial shock caused by Dubai’s debt worries last week seems to have passed.
Wu Wen-tung (吳文同), a manager with Capital Investment Trust (群益投信), said investors stayed on the sidelines in the week before the elections and also predicted that if the election results adversely impact the TAIEX, the fluctuation would only be temporary.
“The market will return to its fundamentals in one week,” Wu said.
Meanwhile, John Brebeck, a fund expert with Yuanta Securities (元大證券), said he does not see the local election results having any negative impact on the KMT administration’s ability to steer the nation.
“Whenever the TAIEX index falls is a good time to buy, “ Brebeck said, adding that the local stock market would turn bullish from now until the first quarter of next year.
On Friday, the TAIEX fell 33.76 points to 7,650.91 on turnover of NT$113.87 billion (US$3.54 billion) amid cautious sentiment before the elections.
For the week to Friday, the benchmark index rose 160 points, or 2.14 percent, to 7,650.91 points after a 2.5 percent fall a week earlier.
Average daily turnover stood at NT$115.48 billion (US$3.59 billion), compared with NT$120.85 billion a week ago.
“Turnover fell despite gains in share prices this [last] week, indicating a cautious mood over the short-term prospects,” TLG Asset Management (台壽保投信) analyst Arch Shih (施博元) said on Friday.
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