New Taipei City Mayor and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜) took part at a student town hall at National Taiwan University (NTU) on Monday last week , with KMT Legislator Charles Chen (陳以信) as the host.
The event took place after Hou’s widely ridiculed appearance at National Chengchi University (NCCU) on June 8.
Hou had clearly done his homework prior to the NTU event, but he was overshadowed by Chen’s overbearing and overprotective manner. Chen reportedly did more talking than Hou, as if he was the one standing for president.
Hou’s performance was uninspiring, overcautious and unimaginative, sufficient for shoring up his existing voter base, but doing little to expand it. This is at a time when he is trailing in the polls, especially among the young and educated who formed his audience that evening, but lean heavily toward supporting the Taiwan People’s Party’s (TPP) candidate, former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
Hou clearly has a problem persuading people that he is the right person for the job. He needed to demonstrate two things to come out of the town hall with a “win”: Why should voters choose him over Ko, and why is it important to kick the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) out.
While Ko is relatively new to politics, his party is basically a toddler that was born only in 2019. Hou has the backing of the century-old KMT, with decades of experience in governing Taiwan, for good or bad, and many years as the primary opposition party.
If Hou wins the presidency, and the KMT has a legislative majority, they would be able to steer the direction of the nation. Should Ko upset the apple cart and tumble into the Presidential Office, he would be backed by a few inexperienced TPP legislators and an expanded legislator-at-large list, and Taiwan would be back to the days of a small governing party and large opposition. He would be treading water for four years.
Pro-blue camp voters want the DPP out to improve prospects of communication with Beijing and maintaining peace without losing Taiwan’s sovereignty, as they would argue former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) achieved during his eight years in office, but would prefer to avoid having this process overseen by the unpredictable Ko.
They also believe that the DPP government has for too long had both the presidency and a legislative majority, and has let power go to its head. These arguments would largely fall on deaf ears among the pro-DPP electorate, for reasons that can be adequately summed up in one case: Ma’s dictatorial handling of the cross-strait service trade agreement a decade ago, which they believed very much jeopardized the nation’s sovereignty.
The argument that the DPP has turned itself into a dictatorship has never been convincing, and has appeared to be ironic coming from the KMT.
If it has lacked effective opposition, this has been in some way the fault of the KMT’s politics for politics’ sake approach — something that helps Ko in his pursuit of the keys to the Presidential Office, as if he would somehow be beyond the green-blue dichotomy — but it is also due to a lack of oversight internally, from within the DPP itself, which is a sign of an immature democracy.
Hou needs to do more to emphasize the shortcomings of a Ko presidency and come up with more persuasive reasons for swing voters to prefer the KMT over the DPP.
First, however, he needs to get people to notice him.
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