Yesterday's election was billed as a must win for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), as an unfavorable result would raise the prospect of challenges to his leadership emerging in the pan-blue camp in the lead up to the 2008 presidential election, political analysts said.
The result -- retaining the mayoral position in Taipei but failing to challenge the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in Kaohsiung -- did not provide the unambiguous result Ma needed, they said.
Taipei has usually been considered a pan-blue city, with two-thirds of voters favoring the pan-blue camp -- consisting of the KMT, People First Party (PFP) and the New Party -- in previous elections.
As electoral behavior in Taipei hasn't changed much in recent years, the KMT's re-election was predicable, said Liu I-chu (劉義周), a political science professor at National Chengchi University.
"Because we had candidates that were incapable of drawing voters from the other side, and a string of scandals had dissuaded swing voters from casting ballots, the election was basically determined by diehard pan-blue and pan-green voters," Liu said.
In this regard, the indicator needed to gauge how convincingly the KMT won Taipei was not Hau Lung-bin's (郝龍斌) level of voter support but the number of votes PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) obtained, said Chao Yung-mau (趙永茂), a political science professor at National Taiwan University.
According to the Taipei Municipal Election Committee, Soong garnered 4.14 percent of the vote, much lower than the party's 17.6 percent showing in the 2002 city councilor election and 17.11 percent it won in the 2004 legislative election.
`Dump-save'
The "dump save" tactic of the 1998 Taipei mayoral election -- in which the New Party candidate ran a distant third with 2.97 percent of the vote, one-tenth of what the party received in 1994 -- emerged again.
"The result will make KMT-PFP relations, which were already damaged due to their deep rifts ahead of the election, even worse," Chao said. "With Soong receiving few votes, the drag effect that PFP has been exerting on the KMT would be significantly reduced."
Liu shared a similar view, saying that the election had proved that smaller parties or independents have little chance of winning elections, especially in polls where only one seat is being contested.
"The PFP will be gradually weakened in the face of the 2007 legislative election, which is going to employ the single member-district, two-vote system,'" Liu said.
Considering this, Liu said the gauge of the KMT's victory this time should be the Kaohsiung mayoral election, which is also of significance to the party's development.
"At this time when the DPP's support rate is at an historically low, Ma needs to explain why the KMT was unable to beat DPP," said Chiou Chang-tay (丘昌泰), a former director of the Research Center for Public Opinion and Election Studies at National Taipei University.
Chiou said that while the southern city has been the stronghold of the pan-green camp, standard electoral behavior provides an insufficient explanation of the KMT's failure in Kaohsiung.
"The failure would surely pose a challenge to Ma's leadership of the KMT. On the one hand, Ma's acceptability in southern Taiwan is still questionable. On the other, failing to defeat a DPP embroiled in multiple troubles was a frustration to the KMT," Chiou said.
While Ma has been widely viewed as a shoo-in for the 2008 presidential election by pan-blue supporters, a small group of ethnic Taiwanese lawmakers are not so confident.
Lien-Wang ticket
About 30 lawmakers, who are on good terms with former KMT chairman Lien Chan (
"The DPP's election could provide encouragement to the KMT's pro-localizational faction, empowering them to make more demands of Ma on issues of concern to them," Chao said.
For the KMT as a whole, Chiou said the party should take it as a "warning."
"Over the past six years after losing power in 2000, the fact that Hau didn't garner as many votes as expected and KMT candidate Huang Chun-ying's (黃俊英) loss to DPP candidate Chen Chu (陳菊) suggests that the party hasn't extended its supporting basis through reform," he added.
Ninth graders were asked to define “trolling” on this year’s standardized exam, reflecting efforts to make the test better reflect real-life situations. Adjustments to this year’s Comprehensive Assessment Program for Junior High School Students were revealed on Sunday, after the last cohort of students completed the test over the weekend. The Ministry of Education solicited feedback about the test from teachers, who approved of the new question in the English portion. Not only was question No. 20 “very much in line with real-life situations,” but it also used a new style in which students were asked to ascertain the correct dictionary definition based
Taiwan is on alert for monkeypox, a rare viral disease that has caused 87 infections in 11 countries over the past three weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Saturday. The WHO on Friday convened an emergency session to discuss a sudden outbreak of monkeypox in North America and Europe. Since the beginning of this month, 87 confirmed cases and 28 possible cases have been identified in 11 countries. The countries with the highest case counts are England with 29 cases, and Portugal and Spain with 23 each. Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease occurring primarily in the tropical rainforest areas
ADAPTING: The CECC said the policy change would happen this week at the earliest, while PCR testing stations would be used to diagnose people and prescribe drugs The general public would be able to use a positive rapid test result that has been confirmed by a doctor for COVID-19 diagnosis starting later this week at the soonest, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday, as it reported 79,441 new local infections and 53 deaths. The center on Saturday announced that it was expanding the rapid test diagnosis policy to people living in indigenous townships and outlying islands, starting today. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, yesterday said the policy might be further expanded to include “all people” this week, at the soonest. He
About 47 percent of people whose deaths were related to COVID-19 this year have died within three days of testing positive, while 33 percent died within three to seven days, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), the center’s spokesman, said 66,247 new local cases, 36 imported cases and 40 deaths were confirmed yesterday. As the number of daily confirmed cases has dropped in the past four days, from 90,331 cases on Thursday last week to 66,247 cases yesterday, the center was asked if Taiwan has reached the peak of a
RSS