Taipei City Councilor Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) has been nominated as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate for a legislative by-election in Taipei. The seat belonged to Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), who was voted Taipei mayor last month. Her sole rival for the position is the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Enoch Wu (吳怡農).
Wang said she already knows how she would attack Wu. Wu said he would run a clean campaign, focusing only on the issues, and steering clear of gossip and smearing his opponent.
For some, Wu’s apparent commitment to a fair fight will come as music to the ears, but for others it will be a matter of concern. Smear tactics work, especially when they involve a candidate preaching to the choir, but they plant niggling doubts in the minds of undecided voters.
Wang has launched her opening salvo, trying to associate Wu with gangsters. The allegation itself is absurd, but that is not the point, as she is not appealing to neutral voters’ rational evaluative skills.
There are also other reasons for casting such negative aspersions.
The first is that she wants to force her opponent onto the back foot, in the hope that he would respond to the allegations and thereby lose control of his preferred narrative.
Wu said he wants to focus on the issues, but right from the get-go he has found himself responding to fantastical accusations. He should avoid doing that.
He might want to look to two results from last month’s local elections, and how much mudslinging harmed some candidates from the DPP, the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP).
The DPP’s initial candidate for Taoyuan mayor, Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), was forced to withdraw from the race after allegations were raised, by Wang herself, concerning his plagiarism of a paper submitted for a master’s program at Chung Hua University. The allegations, while politically motivated, did hold water, and Lin’s candidacy was sunk.
The DPP then began throwing plagiarism allegations at TPP Hsinchu mayoral candidate Ann Kao (高虹安) and KMT Taoyuan mayoral candidate Simon Chang (張善政). Kao, especially, was beset by a constant barrage of accusations of plagiarism and corruption. Both Chang and Kao won their elections. Significantly, they had both chosen not to respond overly to the allegations, or be sidetracked from their own campaign messaging. Although Kao is still subject to investigations as a result of the allegations, it seems that voters either saw through the political mud-slinging or simply did not care.
Wu should be aware of the saying, “the best defense is a good offense.” He should look at what Wang is trying to defend, and what she is trying to distract him from.
It would be neither underhanded nor a smear tactic for Wu to bring up the KMT’s attack on his party’s Taipei mayoral candidate, Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), for resigning as minister of health and welfare to concentrate on his campaign, accusing him of “running away” from his responsibilities.
Wang has opened herself up to accusations of hypocrisy, having agreed to stand for Chiang’s newly vacated legislative seat and “running away” from her responsibilities as a freshly re-elected Taipei city councilor.
Even though in the local elections the voters seemed unimpressed with the DPP’s staunchly anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stance, Wang is clearly seeking to distract the narrative from her clearly pro-CCP persona, put on full view during an appearance in 2020 on the talk show The Two Sides of the Taiwan Strait (海峽兩岸) aired by China’s state broadcaster China Central Television.
If Wu wants to keep his campaign clean, he should trust the wisdom of voters, and not let himself get drawn into responding to absurd attacks.
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