The decade-long political advantage of the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has come to an end, National Tsing Hua University honorary chair professor Yoshiyuki Ogasawara said on Saturday.
Referring to the mass recall campaign mostly targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and an opposition-backed referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County, Ogasawara said that the “summer battle” ended with “a major defeat for the DPP and a major victory for the opposition parties.”
The losses bring to an end the DPP’s relative advantage from 2014 to last year, the political scientist wrote in Japanese on Facebook.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
During that period, the DPP won all three presidential elections (in 2016, 2020 and last year) and control of the legislature twice (in 2016 and 2020).
Ogasawara said the DPP must reconstruct its core narratives of “resisting China and safeguarding Taiwan” and creating a “nuclear-free homeland.”
However, the opposition parties “cannot rely only on being anti-DPP,” he said, as that alone might not bring about a transfer of power.
Saturday’s referendum, initiated by the Taiwan People’s Party and supported by the KMT, asked voters whether they wanted to restart the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, which was shut down in May. The DPP opposed the measure.
The referendum resulted in more than 4.34 million votes in favor (74.2 percent of participating voters), against more than 1.51 million votes against (25.8 percent). However, the votes in favor failed to meet 25 percent threshold of registered voters, or about 5 million votes, needed to pass.
Turnout was 29.5 percent, down from 41.1 percent in the 2021 referendums, when four questions were put to voters.
Recall elections against seven KMT lawmakers all failed by relatively wide margins.
Overall turnout in the seven districts was 49.3 percent, compared with 56.1 percent turnout for last month’s recall elections against 24 KMT lawmakers, figures that could be interpreted as showing a decline in the willingness of DPP supporters to vote, Ogasawara said.
The outcome of Saturday’s recalls had already been decided on July 24, when the first wave of recalls failed, he said.
The referendum vote showed that an “overwhelming majority” of Taiwanese would like the ruling party to change its “nuclear-free homeland” stance, he said.
Opposition to nuclear energy was stronger in the 2010s, but has weakened in the past few years due to high electricity demand from the semiconductor industry, delays in renewable energy and increased reliance on thermal power, he said.
Concerns over environmental and corruption issues surrounding solar panels further raised public unease, he added.
Ogasawara has been “researching Taiwanese politics for more than 30 years and has accurately predicted the results of Taiwan’s general elections several times,” National Tsing Hua University’s Web site says.
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