For all the weeks of strenuous campaigning and endless speculation, the elections in Taiwan's two biggest cities yesterday only confirmed the status quo prevailing for the past four years.
Pollsters and commentators who had predicted a seismic shift away from the accident-prone DPP were left with egg on their face.
In Taipei, the KMT incumbent Ma Ying-jeou (
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Ma, the strongest candidate the KMT could have fielded, increased his margin of victory from 1998 by 13 percentage points.
But this was widely believed to be a comment on Lee's perceived lack of experience, rather than a rejection of the DPP per se.
Ma took 873,102 votes to Lee's 488,811, according to the Taipei Municipal Election Committee.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSRONG, TAIPEI TIMES
A total of 1,374,862 votes were cast out of 1,947,169 eligible voters, a turnout of 70.61 percent, approximately 10 percentage points lower than in 1998.
In the Taipei City Council election, the KMT remained the biggest party, winning 20 of the 52 seats up for grabs, with 32 percent of the vote. This represented a loss of three seats and eight percentage points of support from 1998.
DPP took 17 seats with 28.5 percent of the vote, down from 19 seats and 31 percent in 1998.
The PFP, which had never fought in a city council election before, won eight seats and took 17.5 percent of the vote, while the fading New Party took five seats with 9 percent of the vote, down from nine seats and 18.6 percent in 1998.
Two independents also won seats but the TSU, also fighting a city council election for the first time, failed to win any.
The results left the pan-blue camp consisting of the KMT, the PFP and the New Party dominating the council with 16 seats more than the green camp. This was no surprise, however, as Taipei has, compared with the rest of Taiwan, a disproportionately large number of ethnic mainlanders, considered iron votes for the blue camp.
Only three and a half hours after polls closed at 4pm, Ma made his victory speech from his Pateh Road campaign headquarters, expressing gratitude to his supporters as a crowd cheered and lit firecrackers in celebration.
"This victory is very meaningful," Ma said. "It means that Taipei citizens have recognized the work of [my] administrative team, endorsed my call for quality campaigning and shown their high expectations for Taipei City in the next four years.
"I will work to let Taipei voters know that their votes for me have not been in vain" Ma said.
At Lee's campaign headquarters, however, the mood was far from jubilant, with some supporters even weeping over the defeat, expected though it was.
Lee, holding a sunflower in his hand, remained smiling throughout the delivery of his concession speech.
"Although the result of the mayoral race produced no exclamation mark for me, I feel honored nevertheless," said Lee, with his wife, Laura Huang (
"I want to hereby offer my deepest thanks to Taipei voters who supported me so well even though they were not familiar with me," Lee said.
"I also want to thank my campaign team for their hard work and effort during this campaign period."
Lee added that he had telephoned Ma to give him his congratulations.
DPP headquarters noted that Lee's 36 percent of votes had safeguarded Taipei City's basic DPP vote bank.
"In comparison with Chen Shui-bian's (
But "such an outcome was within our expectation," Luo said.
But yesterday's news was not all bleak for the DPP. In Kaohsiung, Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) held onto his job with an increased majority and the party won the largest number of seats on the city council.
Hsieh took 386,384, votes or 50 percent of the total, to beat his major rival, KMT candidate Huang Jun-ying (
Other minor players, independent candidates Shih Ming-te (
Good weather in the biggest city in southern Taiwan encouraged residents to go and vote, resulting in a 71.38 turnout.
In the city council elections, the DPP took 14 out of 44 seats and the TSU two seats.
In the pan-blue camp, the KMT took 12 seats and the PFP seven seats.
Independent candidates took the remaining nine seats and hold the balance of power between the 16-seat green camp and the blue camp's 19 seats.
Compared with the current city council, the DPP added six seats while the KMT saw an 11-seat decrease.
As in Taipei, the PFP and TSU were fighting in the elections for the first time.
Thousands of Hsieh's supporters last night gathered at his election headquarters to celebrate his victory in a particularly hard-fought battle which saw his margin of victory rise from 0.3 percentage points in 1998 to three percentage points this time around.
"I do appreciate residents who stayed calm in the last three days when facing rumors smearing me," Hsieh said.
Hsieh stressed that all his campaign promises would be put into action based on a strict time frame in an effort to balance development between the north of the island and the south.
Meanwhile, the KMT's Huang thanked supporters at his election headquarters, saying he accepted the election result without rancor and wanted to congratulate Hsieh on his victory.
"I feel so sorry that limited resources and efforts led to the failure which has disappointed you," Huang said.
Independent candidate Chang yesterday said that mischievous letters distributed around the city telling voters she had withdrawn from the contest had influenced the election.
"I hope I'm the last victim of this corrupt election culture," Chang said.
Independent candidate Shih said yesterday that he would do his best to further promote the passage of a draft law promoting Kaohsiung as a municipal port city of commerce and trade.
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