Despite accounting for just 1.2 percent of the national voting population, Chiayi City has been of great significance in charting the country's democratic course -- and last night, for the first time in decades, a non-independent candidate won the mayoral race.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠) upset Mayor Chen Li-chen (陳麗貞) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The result was even more surprising since the city's voting record has not favored the KMT for quite a while.
The major independent camp in the city, the so-called Hsu Band (許家班), was established by Hsu Shih-hsien (許世賢), a former mayor who is famous for resisting KMT authoritarian rule and fighting for democracy during the Martial Law era.
Hsu and her two daughters, Chang Po-ya (張博雅) and Chang Wen-ying (
Chen Li-chen, who served for quite a while as Chang Po-ya's deputy, was affiliated with the camp before she joined the DPP in 2003.
Chen Li-chen had hoped to win re-election by winning over the supporters of both the DPP and the Hsu Band, but she was faced with the burden of representing the DPP, said Chen Cheng-kuan (陳政寬), chairman of the local KMT chapter.
"Chen Li-chen was encumbered with the DPP's negative image from recent scandals, and the city's people think highly of the integrity of their mayor, which is Hsu's key legacy. Chen Li-chen and the DPP, however, disappointed the voters," he said.
He said that Chen Li-chen had also been hurt by the bad blood between the DPP and Chang Po-ya in recent years.
On Thursday, Chang Po-ya had asked her supporters to withdraw their backing for Chen Li-chen.
Chen Chang-kuan said that the KMT victory in Chiayi City, which used to be a hotbed of anti-KMT sentiment because of widespread killings during the 228 Incident, meant a lot to the party.
Lin Hung-chan (
It was like losing the locomotive of southern Taiwan, where people have been strongly backing the DPP for years, Lin said.
Lin, however, rejected the suggestion that the DPP had proved to be a burden for Chen Li-chen.
"Chen Li-chen was a senior civil servant for 18 years, but not a politician with a lot of election experience," Lin said. "This put her at a disadvantage when it came to defending herself and attacking her rival during the campaign."
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra