Taiwan’s presidential race

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An old bruiser enters the race, threatening to split the pro-China vote

Nov 19th 2011 | TAIPEI | from the print edition

TAIWAN’S president, Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang (KMT), who is running for re-election on January 14th, was once thought to have a clear advantage. Elected in a landslide in 2008, Mr Ma brought tensions with China to their lowest state in six decades, forged business agreements across the Taiwan Strait, and help keep an export-dependent island from being swept up in the global financial crisis. In contrast to his wealth of experience (Mr Ma has also been mayor of Taipei, the capital), his chief opponent, Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is a rather owlish academic who has never before been elected to public office.

Now things are not looking nearly as certain. In recent weeks the president’s popularity has dropped. A prediction market run by National Chengchi University, accurate in the past, says the probability of his winning the election dived from over 59% on October 16th to under 42% on November 14th; Ms Tsai stands at 49%. Opinion polls in the island’s media, which usually leans towards the KMT, also show slumping popularity, though Mr Ma still leads by a few percentage points. A victory for Ms Tsai, a moderate in her party, might yet raise tensions with China, which has growled that Taiwanese moves towards independence will be met with force.

What has changed for Mr Ma is the arrival of a second China-friendly presidential candidate. James Soong was once a KMT stalwart, popular in the 1990s as governor of “Taiwan province” (a vestigial position from the days when the Taiwan government, losers in the Chinese civil war, pretended to represent all of China). Mr Soong fell out with his colleagues, and was expelled from the KMT more than a decade ago. Today his popularity ratings stand as high as 15%.

In a tight race he could easily shave off votes from Mr Ma, leading to a DPP victory. Just that happened in 2000, when Mr Soong contested the presidency and split the pro-China vote. It ensured victory for the DPP’s hardline pro-independence candidate, Chen Shui-bian, who is now serving a life sentence in jail for corruption. China favours a victory for Mr Ma. Mr Soong claims China tried to persuade him not to run, though he is probably saying that to earn kudos—even pro-China candidates must not be seen at home as too cuddly towards the Communists.

On November 15th Mr Soong cleared a hurdle when Taiwan’s Central Election Commission confirmed that he had collected enough signatures in support of his presidential bid. A Soong-KMT compact has occasionally been mooted, but now seems very unlikely. Mr Soong vows to fight to the end for Taiwan’s presidency.

But Mr Ma’s popularity was falling even before Mr Soong’s formal candidacy. He dropped a bombshell on October 17th by saying that he favours signing a peace treaty with China within the next decade, provided the public and parliament supported it. It was the first time that Mr Ma had given a timetable for negotiating such a hugely sensitive issue, and it has whipped up alarm in the media and among a China-wary public. The DPP accuses Mr Ma of steering the island towards unification. Mr Ma later backtracked, suggesting, among other things, that a treaty would need a referendum.

Ms Tsai’s popular focus, meanwhile, is on social welfare. Despite stellar economic growth of over 10% last year, Mr Ma’s China policies are still perceived to benefit big business at the expense of ordinary folk. In cities rising prices put property beyond the reach of many. At DPP rallies, supporters approve of Ms Tsai’s higher subsidies for elderly farmers. Now, darkening economic clouds in the world economy may help her case and hurt Mr Ma’s. Already exports to Europe have suffered, and reports are rising of people being laid off or asked to take unpaid leave. Mr Ma still has some cards to play: an economy that would be the envy of many elsewhere, as well as the support of those in favour of closer mainland ties who think it silly to split the pro-China vote.

from the print edition | Asia

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Nov 19th 2011, 17:56

So far, for me this election is boring and full of drama actors along with actresses who love blurs of movements in Taiwanese media such as ERA, TVBS, Apple newspaper. Those commentators on TV who only work hard to show their tongue and play a soap opera for their fantasy decorate Taiwan only to mislead inner and foreign people into feeling that Taiwan can be independent from Beijing’s China because there are so many “democratic chickens” and don’t kill this kind of animal.

Two months ago, I evaluated this election estimating the three candidate's possible poll number respectively on Economist.com. Apparently, the probable poll number of these three accord with my prediction posted two months ago. From my successful experience in the past two election, Tsai Ing-Wen may get 6 million polls while Ma Ying-Jeou can get 5.6 million and Soong Tsu-Yu (James Soong) has 1.5 million.

Due to the style of openness and indigenous origin, I support Democratic Progressive Party, formed by the lawyers and protestors in 1979’s Kaohsiung incident, from 1996 when Professor Peng Ming-Min joined the election to this fifth fully democratic election. Taiwan’s democratic miracle is built in 2000 by Chen Shui-Bian, shakening Beijing’s Jiang Ze-Min and Zhu Rong-Ji (Zhu and I hated Lee Tung-Hui and KMT so we said Chen did good) as well as affecting so many leaders in U.S. and Asia. In 2000’s election, James Soong, who once thought Lian Chan as the younger, tore KMT in two for “Xin-Piao case” and built People’s First Party shortly after the election, making a chance of Chen’s victory. Therefore, famously in the world, Soong was called “Mr. White” and Ma got “Mr. Clean” while Lian was “Mr. Black”.

However, unfortunately for Taiwanese, Ma Ying-Jeou still recovered the KMT regime, getting no score on inner economy because of wrong allocation and donation of emergency fund in 2008’s August Flood and social pension. Furthermore, Ma gave a joke that he should hold a referendum, losing his principle severely. In my opinion, KMT is impotent and hard to trust anyway when it comes to Taiwan affair. Instead, anyone who keep mainland China and Taiwan being seen as one country must support Beijing’s central government directly.

Customarily, Beijing is reluctant to see the election of island leader in any form. Last month, then legislator Lee Oau claimed he “delivered” a colloquial message saying Beijing demands abandon of James Soong with pressure when Lee jocularly joined a TV program in ERA, anchored by the lawyer Hsieh Zen-Wu and a female nobody who only know how to bother me. Besides, Lee Oau talked of “disclosure” of what Beijing must support Ma in case of Tsai’s “conspiracy”.

Because of too many paradox existing in his sayings, a few weeks ago I wrote a letter to Beijing’s boss Li Ke-Qiang requesting for both whether this “story” is true and what Xi Jin-Ping wants to do after Tsai wins this election. Both Xi and Li noticed that the fifth generation (as well as Beijing’s Taiwan affair officer Wang Yi) never gave any order like this but needed to discussed Taiwan issue during next March’s Congress. In addition, Xi has already guessed the probable origin of this sayings.

Business Week reported Tsai’s thought of Beijing yesterday, referring to the cross-strait thinking by a statement “A peaceful relationship would serve both sides”. Also, she was aware of the Chinese military and trade concerned; meanwhile, she wants Beijing to know “The DPP has transformed itself into a party that is more focused on social economic issues.” As I once talked with Hsiao Mei-Qin, an assistant of Tsai, and Cheng Hung-Yi, the most professional comment anchor, the final measure of whether Tsai or Ma can be elected in 2012 is the content of domestic issue rather than to be “for or against” China, of course including Soong’s polls letting Ma get fewer polls. I don’t think that these two are good enough to support Taiwan. Tsai and Ma don’t have ability like Chen Shui-Bian, the ever-prominent Asian leader, or Lian Chan, the former KMT’s chairman, but the more democratic structure should continue. By party-politics logic DPP needs the support so that I can carry out my work on DPP as if what I did in the tenure of the monkey-king Chen Shui-Bian and Lu Shiu-Lian (Anne Lu).

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這篇今日回想好沉重。馬英九在內政上又是漲原物料，又遇八八風災，也有和王金平的心結盛傳，可是也有個單年10%（筆者覺得只有4.5%）成長。Customarily 開頭這段聊李敖傳北京的話的事，吵了台北政壇一月有餘，說中共有「高層」希望宋楚瑜棄選，認同一個中國的必定支持馬，粉碎蔡英文的陰謀。對了，根據謝震武和另一個...叫谷懷萱，後來就比較不會太纏著筆者的那位，的年代電視「新聞面對面」節目。但就筆者查證不知是何方神聖為高層，後來也搞棄宋保馬了，李大師就真的玩了一次，真是可疑又可恨這政黨政治怎麼有人這樣玩掉民主。馬英九在當個月時，當年對兩岸定調與否給了模糊空間，也是有希望偏統一大局為重的說法，但又不想提多，所以由內政的選舉支票比較來看藍綠消長。蔡偏重社會、經濟衡平但是整體感不足，細節不加規畫，也由於前一年沒有太大幅度的地方選舉優勢，還是敗下陣來。本來以為蔡600萬有餘的，而馬略優於560萬左右。作得這麼爛的馬還是連任了，在十五年前筆者若以大方向提，有先猜會連任，但小格局上會以為馬不堪大任，這也是筆者後來覺得很狐疑，就筆者對民主政治的認知陷入一陣迷霧的大問題。