There are only five days to go before the Hualien County commissioner by-election and as usual it is being touted as an indicator of political fortunes in the presidential election. Is it?
Well, it is not the case that the result in Hualien is likely to be reflective of national sentiment as a whole, so whoever wins the election will gain little impetus from it for the presidential campaign. Hualien is an isolated, predominantly rural, relatively impoverished county with a low educational standard and a large Aboriginal population which has traditionally played the role of clients to the KMT -- with the result that the county has been in KMT hands for half a century. Hualien is, therefore, totally unlike the teeming cities on Taiwan's west coast -- remember one third of Taiwan's population lives within 50km of the center of Taipei.
Nevertheless the election does hold interest if only because it serves to confirm trends that will show themselves elsewhere and which have already in Taiwan's brief democratic history become leitmotifs of Taiwan's electoral politics.
On the blue camp side there is the by now traditional split of the vote between the man the KMT has selected, Hsieh Shen-shan (
The KMT's action therefore in appointing Hsieh as its candidate, something with which the PFP seems to have grumpily gone along with while some PFP heavyweights actually stump for Wu, is an indication that the KMT tiger is trying to change its stripes. We admit that we seldom give the party any credit for this. But it is fair to say that even 10 years ago there would have been no squeamishness about selecting someone with a murky record such as Wu as the candidate. The fact that the KMT resisted doing the easy -- and undoubtedly effective -- thing suggests the party is taking the idea that it must dissociate itself from its hugely corrupt past seriously. This of course creates tensions which the face-off between Wu and Hsieh illustrates.
The KMT vote being split by a renegade running as an independent has become such a common feature of elections in Taiwan that pan-blue unity is the exception rather than the rule. But this should not be taken as overly ominous for pan-blue cooperation in the presidential election. The contrast in Hualien is between a man on the ground with local connections and a murky past and an outsider imposed from above to boost the party's reform image. It is not perhaps a situation specific to Hualien, but it is a local situation in a way that the presidential election is not. Wu has nothing to lose by running as an independent. Lien Chan (
As for You Ying-lung (
The world has become less predictable, less rules-based, and more shaped by the impulses of strongmen and short-term dealmaking. Nowhere is this more consequential than in East Asia, where the fate of democratic Taiwan hinges on how global powers manage — or mismanage — tensions with an increasingly assertive China. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has deepened the global uncertainty, with his erratic, highly personalized foreign-policy approach unsettling allies and adversaries alike. Trump appears to treat foreign policy like a reality show. Yet, paradoxically, the global unpredictability may offer Taiwan unexpected deterrence. For China, the risk of provoking the
Eating at a breakfast shop the other day, I turned to an old man sitting at the table next to mine. “Hey, did you hear that the Legislative Yuan passed a bill to give everyone NT$10,000 [US$340]?” I said, pointing to a newspaper headline. The old man cursed, then said: “Yeah, the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] canceled the NT$100 billion subsidy for Taiwan Power Co and announced they would give everyone NT$10,000 instead. “Nice. Now they are saying that if electricity prices go up, we can just use that cash to pay for it,” he said. “I have no time for drivel like
Young supporters of former Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) were detained for posting the names and photographs of judges and prosecutors believed to be overseeing the Core Pacific City redevelopment corruption case. The supporters should be held responsible for their actions. As for Ko’s successor, TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), he should reflect on whether his own comments are provocative and whether his statements might be misunderstood. Huang needs to apologize to the public and the judiciary. In the article, “Why does sorry seem to be the hardest word?” the late political commentator Nan Fang Shuo (南方朔) wrote
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) reportedly told the EU’s top diplomat that China does not want Russia to lose in Ukraine, because the US could shift its focus to countering Beijing. Wang made the comment while meeting with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas on July 2 at the 13th China-EU High-Level Strategic Dialogue in Brussels, the South China Morning Post and CNN reported. Although contrary to China’s claim of neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, such a frank remark suggests Beijing might prefer a protracted war to keep the US from focusing on
RSS