When the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lost the Miaoli by-election on March 14, many considered it a minor blip for a party that has enjoyed uninterrupted electoral success since the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) era began in 2005 with his stint as party chairman.
Many pundits blamed the defeat on the party’s poor performance at the national level, but a more likely explanation for the Miaoli defeat was the party’s overconfidence. Instead of choosing a candidate well-known for his or her commitment and hard work in the local community, in a hat-tip to everything bad about Taiwan’s politics, the party plumped for the wife of the deposed legislator, who had lost his seat after being found guilty of vote buying.
Kang Shih-ju (康世儒), passed over by the KMT for the nomination, promptly left the party and ran as an independent, winning despite the efforts of two-thirds of the party’s legislators.
Nerves jangled by defeat, it now seems the KMT is worried about losing tomorrow’s by-election in Taipei’s Da-an District (大安).
As in Miaoli, the KMT faces a direct challenge from another pan-blue candidate: The New Party’s Yao Li-ming (姚立明) is running as an independent.
While the New Party is no longer an electoral force, its strong anti-corruption platform could appeal to pan-blue constituents infuriated by the behavior of the former holder of the seat, Diane Lee (李慶安), who flouted the law for 14 years by hiding the fact that she had dual nationality.
The worst-case scenario for the KMT could see Yao split the pan-blue vote with the KMT candidate and pave the way for a shock Democratic Progressive Party victory. Low turnout of a disappointed KMT faithful could also result in the loss of one of the party’s strongholds.
A second defeat in two weeks would turn the blip into a minor crisis.
So, up steps the Central Personnel Administration (CPA), which on Tuesday took the unusual step of calling on civil servants living in the constituency — of which there are many — to make sure they vote tomorrow.
Although not unprecedented — government bodies made similar announcements during the KMT’s previous spell in government — the CPA’s announcement is quite clearly a clarion call to a traditionally pro-KMT section of society to do their bit for the party’s cause.
The CPA has defended the move by saying that it only asked people to vote. But if it was worried about turnout, why didn’t it do the same thing before the Miaoli election, where only around 50 percent of those eligible voted?
If the KMT thinks it can save electoral face and make everything right by ordering people to vote, then it is barking up the wrong tree because it is just this type of arrogance that is the party’s growing problem. Five decades of unchallenged power helped the KMT develop an air of entitlement, and since its return to power this regrettable trait has come to the fore once again.
If the KMT loses tomorrow in an election where it faces no real competition, then it will only have itself to blame. It has to realize that arrogance and complacency are not winning formulas in a democracy.
On Sept. 3 in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out a parade of new weapons in PLA service that threaten Taiwan — some of that Taiwan is addressing with added and new military investments and some of which it cannot, having to rely on the initiative of allies like the United States. The CCP’s goal of replacing US leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
A report by the US-based Jamestown Foundation on Tuesday last week warned that China is operating illegal oil drilling inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Island (Dongsha, 東沙群島), marking a sharp escalation in Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. The report said that, starting in July, state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp installed 12 permanent or semi-permanent oil rig structures and dozens of associated ships deep inside Taiwan’s EEZ about 48km from the restricted waters of Pratas Island in the northeast of the South China Sea, islands that are home to a Taiwanese garrison. The rigs not only typify
RSS