The results of the today’s special municipality elections will help shape the wider political landscape over the next few years, according to political observers.
Although they are just local elections, the outcome will have implications for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his policy on China as well as for the nation’s two main political parties.
For starters, academics said, the share of seats and votes in the five municipality elections will give an indication of the national standing of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and their chances in the 2012 presidential elections.
The results will also be viewed as an endorsement or rejection of Ma’s policies of deregulation, liberalization and reconciliation, particularly with regard to China, the academics said.
If the KMT scores at least a 3-to-2 win in the five races, it will be seen as a vote of confidence in Ma’s general policies and -performance, said Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), a research fellow at National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations.
On the other hand, a 3-to-2 win for the DPP would give it “the right momentum to contest the 2012 presidential election,” he said.
China, meanwhile, will be closely gauging the elections in Taipei City, Sinbei City (the new name for Taipei County after its upgrade next month), Greater Taichung, Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung in order to better plan its future moves, he said.
“For China, the share of votes may be a good indicator of the outcome of the 2012, election since the electorate in the five cities make up almost 65 percent of Taiwan’s total population of 23 million,” Wu said.
China will be looking for a clue to Ma’s chances of retaining power in 2012, but is unlikely to react strongly to the election results, preferring instead to play down their importance, said Wu, a former chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council.
Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠), a research fellow for national security affairs at the Taiwan Brain Trust, said “a KMT victory would increase the chances of political talks -between the party and its Chinese counterpart in Ma’s second term.”
Meanwhile, a DPP victory would signal a rebirth of the party after its loss in the 2008 presidential election, Liu said.
For at least two of the candidates in the elections, the poll could serve as a launch pad to bigger ambitions, one of the academics said.
The neck-and-neck race in the two northern cities of Taipei and Sinbei is like a presidential primary for the DPP, according to Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Soochow University.
The DPP candidates, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) in Taipei City and DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in Sinbei, are the two favorites to win the party’s nomination for the 2012 presidential election, Hsu said.
They are seeking not just mayoral seats, but also wider electoral support, he said.
He expressed the view that this time voters are more focused on economic issues and the candidates themselves rather than on the thorny independence-unification issue that has dominated campaigns in the past.
The forum was titled “The special municipality elections: possible impacts and implications” and it was attended by more than 20 overseas representatives.
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