So yeah, the election of county magistrates, city mayors and other positions was concluded last Saturday, and by now we've all had to time to contemplate what these elections might mean for the present and future of Taiwan.
The election results can be viewed on the Central Election Commission's website. Applause to them for making these results available in English. I didn't see any voter's guides available in English, but maybe voters had to specifically request them. Making election information available in a variety of languages helps ensure a vibrant democracy, and the Election Commission has made great strides in this area.
Let's start with the party votes. As you can see from the website, it was a big win for the KMT. The Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party, won 50.03% of the popular vote against 41.62% for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). As a result President Tsai Ying-wen offered to resign as head of the DPP, though this was largely a ceremonial gesture. In third place was the Taiwan People's Party, which received only 1.49% of the vote.
I can't see this "KMT resurgence" as the damning critique of DPP rule some are making it out to be. I think the DPP just got too complacent after Tsai Ying-wen's landslide reelection, and some of the candidates they were offering were uninspired choices. Chen Shih-chung, who was running opposite the KMT's Chiang Wan-an in Taipei City, might have seemed like a solid choice, but he's also the face of COVID in Taiwan, and thus a living reminder that the last two years sucked.
As for individual city and county mayors and magistrates I have less of an opinion. I wasn't following the news regarding Chiang Wan-an, "Chiang Kai-shek's grandson" that closely, though I did often wonder at things he said in the news. In the office of Taipei City Mayor he's not likely to wield enormous power, though the position this puts him in with regard to the next presidential election is worrying. As a foreigner I'm of course not allowed to have opinions on the Cross-Strait Situation, the KMT vs. the DPP, or other facets of local politics, but let me just say that the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou was my least favorite Taiwanese president, and that's taking into account all the shenanigans Chen Shui-bian was guilty of. (1)
The elections in south Taiwan fall more into the province (heh heh) of this blog, as do the elections in Taitung County, where I used to live and which I often discussed here. In south Taiwan the DPP is still going strong, winning the top posts in Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung. Chou Chun-mi is the new Pingtung County Magistrate, though it was a very close race between her and the KMT's Su Ching-chuan.
Taitung is another story. In Taitung the KMT's Yao Ching-ling won a second term by a large margin. I credit this win to three factors: 1) longstanding local loyalty to the KMT, 2) the fact that the KMT is seen as "the development party" in that area, and 3) the additional fact that the DPP's candidate, Liu Chao-hao, was another uninspired choice by the DPP. Though still a County Councilmember, Liu Chao-hao has zero charisma, and he's been losing the office of County Magistrate to KMT candidates for years.
On a still more local level, down to the area where I live, the KMT's candidate for County Magistrate Su Ching-chuan actually won Hengchun Municipality, which puts it at odds with much of the rest of Pingtung County. The County Councilor position doesn't quite fall along township/municipality lines, but Lin Cai-ying, running unaffiliated for Constituency 15, won the "Highland indigenous" office. KMT candidate You Shih-jing won the position of Hengchun Municipality Mayor, and Liao Wen-zhi, running unaffiliated, is the new Village Chief of Sigou Village.
Hengchun Municipality voted for lowering the voting age to 18, though the Constitutional Referendum was vetoed by Taiwan as a whole.
And that was the last election, at least as far as I'm concerned. No more trucks blaring loud music and entreaties for votes next to my house, no more strangers knocking on my door distributing leaflets, and no more fireworks and political demonstrations blocking my route home from school every day. At least for now, that is. One day - a day that will come all too soon - there will be another election, and in the weeks leading up to that election we'll all have to endure the noise, the distractions, and the inconveniences that every election inevitably engenders.
Democracy in Taiwan is alive and kicking. I just sometimes wish isn't wasn't kicking as loudly, or as insistently, as it often does.
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NOTE: The spellings of candidates' names in this entry conform to those used on the Central Election Commission's website. In many cases these are not the spellings I would use.
1. I'm joking of course. Hopefully that was obvious. Taiwan isn't part of China... yet.
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