Just six months after being dramatically re-elected as chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) emerged from Saturday’s special municipality elections with her prospects of a future presidential bid in doubt.
In one of the biggest tests for her leadership to date, the opposition party suffered a setback over the weekend, failing to secure a single additional mayoralty post despite close pre-election opinion polls and an increase in the party’s overall popular vote.
Perhaps most worrisome for the DPP are the wide margins of defeat that both Tsai and former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) experienced in northern Taiwan — a key area where the DPP had pinned its hopes of a comeback.
Opinion polls, which throughout the election campaign pointed to very close races, offered no hints that Tsai would lose by more than 5 percent in Sinbei City (the soon-to-be-renamed Taipei County) and Su by an astonishing 12 percent in Taipei City. Before the election, both were seen as the party’s best chances against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in 2012.
Despite efforts to downplay concern that they both were eyeing a presidential run, the pair never forcefully dismissed the possibility, which was supported by a vast number of DPP politicians and supporters.
Surveys taken prior to the campaign showed that a run for president by Tsai, paired with Su, would likely garner the most votes compared with other potential candidate pairings within the party.
While Saturday’s elections, fought primarily on local issues, cannot be seen as a concrete indicator of the 2012 presidential poll, experts said the DPP will have to re-evaluate its assumptions about its popularity — especially among independent voters, a voting bloc that largely failed to support either Tsai or Su.
“They were the best the DPP had to offer, but they could not match up to a routine [lineup] of Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] candidates,” said Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), a researcher at Taiwan Thinktank. “They will have a lot of convincing to do if they think they can pull off a win against Ma in 2012.”
This issue is expected to dominate talks within the DPP over the next few weeks.
tough questions
Some party sources said that Tsai, and to a lesser extent, Su, would likely face tough questions over their less-than-stellar performances.
Asked whether any cracks had appeared in Tsai’s leadership, DPP Secretary-General Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) told a press conference on Saturday night that Tsai had already taken into account the “possible challenges and difficulties that she will have to face within the party.”
Some of these questions, political observers said, are likely to originate with the DPP politicians that helped pull off Saturday’s biggest shock, when Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), a former DPP secretary-general, came within 2.5 percent of Jason Hu (胡志強), the KMT’s highly popular mayor in Taichung who initially enjoyed a double-digit lead over his opponent.
As the only spark in an election night that was otherwise disappointing for the party, either Su Jia-chyuan or former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who spearheaded his campaign, could likely see their names appear on the ballot for the presidential primaries. Hsieh represented the DPP in 2008, losing to Ma by 17 percent.
“They definitely earned their places on that ballot,” said Chen Yi-shen (陳儀深), an associate researcher at Academia Sinica. “After all, the fact remains that whoever has the highest popularity ratings has the highest chance of being selected.”
Any of these factors could complicate issues for Tsai, who just six months ago was seen as a lock for the DPP nomination, after taking a staggering 90 percent of the vote in her re-election as chairperson. The factors could also put the brakes on Su Tseng-chang’s return to the public spotlight after he ran alongside Hsieh in 2008.
sobering developments
However, those sobering developments do not appear to have dampened the enthusiasm shown by some fervent supporters. Against Saturday night’s somber losses, hundreds of supporters still rallied outside both Tsai and Su Tseng-chang’s campaign offices, leading cries of: “Run for president, Run for president!”
There are also signs that neither the DPP nor, more importantly, its supporters, have given up on the two politicians.
Wu said on Saturday that Tsai would continue on as party chairperson, despite a long tradition of DPP leaders stepping down after election losses.
This, Chen said, was one reason why it would be premature to dismiss the two simply because of their disappointing showing in the election.
“It’s definitely a bit of a setback, but for them it’s not the end,” he said. “If this loss gives them a chance to reflect, to see where they failed to connect with voters, it could give them an even better chance ahead of 2012.”
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