After its crushing defeat in the local elections on Saturday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) must seriously reflect on its failures ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) scored a major victory in the elections, taking 13 of the 21 leadership positions in cities and counties, including four of the nation’s six biggest metropolitan areas where nearly 70 percent of Taiwanese live. The DPP, on the other hand, saw its number of local government seats fall from seven to five, as it was swept out of power in northern Taiwan.
Although the DPP carried the burden of being the ruling party and delayed its nominations for the elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it also made several strategic mistakes.
A major misstep was nominating former Central Epidemic Command Center head Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) for Taipei mayor in July, when daily COVID-19 cases were high. This became fodder for the KMT to attack the former minister of health and welfare, with the opposition accusing him of abandoning his responsibilities to focus on running for mayor.
Chen’s nomination also meant that former minister of transportation and communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), who until then had been striving to win the DPP’s nomination to run for Taipei mayor, was nominated for New Taipei City mayor, which caused the DPP to lose momentum.
Later, the DPP’s mayoral nominee for Taoyuan, former Hsinchu mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), became embroiled in controversy when he was accused of plagiarizing his master’s theses.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) at the time called on all DPP members to come forward and support Lin, but he withdrew from the race a week later.
The DPP’s candidate decisionmaking process was criticized for being undemocratic, as the DPP leadership handpicked the candidates rather than allowing party members to choose them through primaries.
Tsai took responsibility for the defeat by resigning as the party’s chairperson on Saturday evening, while a DPP faction closer aligned to her was also blamed for the party’s poor electoral showing.
The DPP needs to regroup after Tsai’s resignation, just as it did after the 2018 local elections when the party suffered a devastating defeat.
Taipei was not a DPP stronghold to begin with, and defeat in the city would not normally mean an overall loss for the party.
However, the KMT’s attacks on Chen over his handling of the pandemic began to affect the campaigns of other DPP candidates. The party also miscalculated when it assumed that independent Taipei mayoral candidate Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) would take votes away from the KMT.
Late in campaigning, the DPP tried to tout its achievements as the ruling party to drum up support for its candidates, and tried to equate the election of its nominees as a means to protect Taiwan from China.
Of course, resisting China is important, but that has nothing to do with local elections. The links between national security and DPP candidates were weak, and the lack of support at the polls reflects public indifference on the issue.
Overall, the KMT’s nominees put forward relatively shallow political policies, and they were often ridiculed for “campaigning while lying down.”
Despite that, the disappointment among DPP supporters was such that they overlooked the KMT’s shortcomings. The KMT is still the same KMT, but the DPP has lost touch with what voters expect from it.
DPP caucus director Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said he hopes the party can be more “down to earth,” and that DPP members who are more in touch with public opinion are allowed to make decisions for the party.
Meanwhile, the party’s performance in Saturday’s elections is considered a bellwether for presidential elections to come and the DPP might not necessarily regain lost momentum as it did before the 2020 presidential election.
Tsai’s successor as chairperson must unite the party and avoid the internal strife provoked during the preliminary for presidential candidates within the party in 2019.
The person succeeding Tsai as party head could possibly be a DPP heavyweight, such as Vice President William Lai (賴清德), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) or former vice president Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁).
Lai is seen as likely to represent the party in the 2024 presidential election as he has been a mayor, premier and vice president and accumulated diplomatic experience by visiting the US, Japan and Taiwan’s allies.
Canvassing nationwide for the party’s candidates in the local elections also helped him establish a solid foundation to contest the post.
The election of the Taiwan People’s Party’s Ann Kao (高虹安) as Hsinchu mayor, independent Chung Tung-chin (鍾東錦) as Miaoli County commissioner and independent Chen Fu-hai (陳福海) as Kinmen County commissioner indicate a possible multiparty competition in the 2024 presidential election.
As Tsai said on Saturday night following the election setback: “Changes and challenges will only come one after another.”
Whether the DPP is able to gain a favorable position in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election remains to be seen.
Translated by staff writers William Hetherington and Liu Tzu-hsuan
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