Each of Taiwan's 31 electoral districts has its own special characteristics. Taoyuan County, which elects 13 members of the Legislature, is the nation's biggest electorate. It is also one of its most complex.
Home to 1,800,000 people, Taoyuan County has long been divided into the North, focused on Taoyuan city, and the South, which has Chungli city as its key city. The North is mainly Hoklo while the South is predominantly Hakka. In addition, numerous military bases and large numbers of military villages throughout the county mean that many Mainlanders also live in Taoyuan.
PHOTO: LU SHU-CHING, TAIPEI TIMES
In addition to the county's some 40,000 Aboriginal people, about one-half of the population is Hoklo, while one-third is Hakka and about one-sixth (or a bit more) is Mainlander.
In the authoritarian period, this ethnic division led to strong competition between a Hoklo and a Hakka faction. The divisions became so bad that the two sides agreed to a rotation of offices.
In addition to these ethnic elements, Taoyuan County also has a coastal region and a mountainous region. This interplay of ethnic and geographical differences makes the county extremely complex for any political party trying to win control. Yet, in the legislative election, Taoyuan elects over seven percent of the seats. Thus, Taoyuan County cannot be ignored.
Over the years, Taoyuan has tended to be a pan-blue citadel. In the March 2004 presidential election, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
People from all sides of the political spectrum agree about two key aspects of the current legislative campaign in Taoyuan.
First, all sides have nominated too many candidates. Nineteen of the twenty-eight candidates running for the thirteen positions are nominees of the four major parties.
In addition, there are at least one or two reasonably powerful non-partisans. Secondly, no party (with the partial exception of the KMT) has implemented a system of vote allocation.
For this election the DPP has nominated seven candidates, even though the presidential vote would suggest six candidates would have been more appropriate. Taoyuan has one seat guaranteed for a woman, and so the DPP added a woman to go with the six seats won by males in the primary election within the DPP.
However, this method of choosing candidates led to the selection of only three from the north -- the heartland of DPP support in Taoyuan -- and the nomination of four candidates in the south, three of whom are Hakka.
Into this mix the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) has now nominated two candidates. Most believe only one, Huang Tsung-yuan (
The pan-blues also have nominated too many candidates. The KMT originally nominated six candidates, though a seventh, actually a member of the New Party, has come in under the KMT banner. The KMT nominations seem to have considered geographical origins more carefully than the DPP.
The geographical distribution has meant that the KMT has ordered each of the township party headquarters to help a specific candidate. This is the only vote allocation so far decreed in Taoyuan, but everyone (including KMT candidates) agrees that it is next to worthless.
Furthermore, the KMT votes in the Huang Fu-hsing (黃復興) Party Headquarters from retired servicemen have all been allocated to Chu Feng-chih (朱鳳芝), a female Mainlander KMT nominee. All other KMT candidates have complained about this distribution, especially as all public opinion polls have Chu in either first or second place, with almost twice as many votes as the third and fourth-ranked candidates. In terms of gender, two of the six original KMT candidates are women.
The PFP has nominated three candidates, bringing the total number of pan-blue nominees to ten. Together with the KMT's Chu, Sun Ta-chien (
With so many candidates running, the margin between winners and losers will be quite small. This means that successful vote allocation could improve a party's result by one or two seats, but it also means that mistakes in vote allocation could mean that a certain winner could lose.
Thus, with the complexity of the election, its uncertainty, and the lateness in the campaign, probably no party will attempt to implement a vote allocation strategy in Taoyuan County. The likelihood is that the pan-greens will keep their five seats and possibly increase their seats to six. But the leading pan-blue candidates will do well. In addition to Sun and Chu, Wu Chih-yang (
Bruce Jacobs is Professor of Asian Languages and Studies and Director of the Taiwan Research Unit at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at