Taiwan's ruling party wins three mayoral seats

Updated November 29, 2010 11:20:11

Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang party, has won three out of five mayoral seats on the island.

The outcome is seen as a test of the China-friendly KMT's popularity, ahead of the 2012 presidential election. Saturday's results mean the conservative KMT will have mayors in the capital Taipei, and the vital cities of Taichung and Sinbei. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party held on to the southern cities of Kaohsiung and Tainan. The elections were marred by violence on Friday, when the son of former KMT vice-President, Lien Chan, was shot and critically wounded during a campaign rally.

Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Bruce Jacobs, Professor of Asian Studies at Monash University

LAM: Professor Jacobs first of all what do you make of these mayoral results, do you think they're an accurate reflection of Taiwanese support for the KMT?

JACOBS: I think your introduction was a bit one-sided, in fact both parties are quite disappointed with the results. The KMT won three seats, but on the other hand if you look at the total vote in the five mayoral elections, the DPP has 400-thousand more votes, and in the presidential election in 2012, every vote counts the same. So neither side could be really happy. Also the DPP in the city council elections won the same number of seats as the KMT, although there its percentage was a bit less. It was a mixed bag.

LAM: As you say it's a mixed bag, but why do you think the KMT has lost momentum, if you like, since the 2008 elections when they were riding really on a crest of huge popularity, particularly the President Ma Ying-jeou?

JACOBS: Well Taiwan has about 20 per cent swing voters, these are voters who at each election look at the issues, look at the candidates and make their decision at the time. And what happened in 2008 was there was dissatisfaction with the Chen Shui-bian government, and the Ma Ying-jeou campaign benefitted from that and the great swing happened in 2008, but what's very interesting is both in the local elections last year in 2009, and in these elections, the DPP has come back. There's been a great deal of dissatisfaction with the Ma government. The approval ratings are generally in the low 30 per cent and this is more than two years in and they've never been much higher. So there's dissatisfaction both from the Taiwanese who are unhappy with the approaches to China, and there's dissatisfaction from the strongly conservative mainlander groups, they're sometimes called the deep-blue, who are also dissatisfied with Ma. So his satisfaction ratings are quite low.

In addition, when he campaigned for president, he said that everything would immediately be good, and the campaign slogan was a pun on Ma's name, which means that everything will be immediately fine. The idea was that the Ma government would come into power and everything would just be really good after some difficulties from the DPP period. And in fact it hasn't worked out that way. There was great distress, dissatisfaction with the first cabinet, which has been replaced. But even now the Ma government lacks momentum.

LAM: So just briefly in the lead up to the 2012 presidential elections, may we read anything in this weekend's results or not?

JACOBS: Yes, what we can read is that it's going to be a very competitive election. That Ma's reelection is no certainty at all.

LAM: And do you think the DPP has repaired itself since the damage that was wrought by the conviction of former president Chen Shui-bian on corruption charges?

JACOBS: Yes it has, it was utterly demoralized in 2008, and now it's come back. Now how the DPP will go in the 2012 election will depend on who they nominate. And the legislative elections will also take place in 2012, and again it will be very interesting to see who the DPP nominates and what kind of campaign they run. The campaigns they ran this time were much less partisan than they have been in the past. In the past Kuomintang had de-emphasised its party, and this time it emphasised its party, but the DPP de-emphasised it, and the DPP stressed local issues. So it'll be very interesting to see if they can sort of maintain this sort of non-ideological approach. And if they do they're very likely to go reasonably well.