Thank goodness for the Lien family, the father-son dynasty of losers who are so unelectable that democracy can smoothly function in Taiwan. This was a pretty amazing election result, and the Sunflower Movement deserves so much of the credit. Independent candidates shone, something that only could have happened in the wake of the Sunflower Movement. Im not sure if the DPP is savvy, opportunistic or sincerely interested in the future of Taiwan, but in several key races they withdrew candidates and supported independent candidates, including new Taipei Mayor-elect Ko Wen-zhe. The inference here is that they understand that Taiwanese care less about parties than the future of the country, and (drastically unlike the KMT) are happy to reduce the party profile in order for a real change in power. They got it -- at least in the balance of blue-green seats in every city council in Taiwan, they got it. The end result will be trumpeted as undermining the authority of the president, though of course these are municipal elections -- the connection is in fact a bit vague. Taipeis new mayor Ko is clearly socially concerned, and earlier this year I sat in one of his focus groups, in which he interrogated all sorts of social groups about the major issues that confront them. However, no one really knows about his ability to run a government bureaucracy, so we will have to see if he is truly a vanguard of change or just an idealist. You could probably count me among the optimists at this point, but in many ways Mayor Ko is such a wildcard, its hard to know what his election will mean -- aside from the fact that the KMT will not have a green light to blindly sell Taiwans assets to China. The results of this will likely play out slowly rather than quickly. Side note: I seldom feel compelled to chime in on politics, but the Taipei Times coverage of municipal elections has been pathetic. The day of the election they didnt even have an article outlining the major elections taking place or what was to be won or lost. Thats pretty atrocious. The best coverage is to be found in blogs and even the NYT.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 20:43:33 +0000
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