TAIWAN: Hsieh takes over DPP following election defeat
Updated
Following a crushing defeat in parliamentary elections at the weekend, Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party or DPP has installed its presidential hopeful as the new acting chairman. Frank Hsieh takes over from outgoing President, Chen Shui-bian, who resigned after the DPP's dismal performance in Saturday's polls, in which the nationalist Kuomintang or KMT party secured a two thirds parliamentary majority. Mr Hsieh has a tough job ahead in the leadup to presidential elections on March 22nd -- with opinion polls out today putting him a long way behind the KMT candidate Ma Ying-Jeou.
Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speakers: Professor Philip Yang, at the Department of Political Science at Taiwan's National University
YANG: KMT's landslide victory represented the people wanting to send a message to the current government to say that in the past six to eight years the government failed to take care of those economic issues and also cross-strait relations. And that the DPP government not only failed to deliver economic performance, but also deteriorated the US-Taiwan relationship. So that actually made people further worried about this kind of ideological and political provocation across the Taiwan Strait. So that's probably also one of the reasons for the DPP's humiliating defeat in the legislative election.
PODGER: With such a strong performance in the parliamentary elections is there a feeling perhaps in the KMT that the presidential election on March the 22nd is there's for the taking, or is there work still to be done?
YANG: Well I think that the KMT was actually also surprised about the result of the legislative election. There probably will be a domino effect from the legislative to the presidential elections. But I think the KMT right now is still very cautious about a possible backfire from the latest election, because if you simply look at the numbers of seats, yes indeed KMT enjoyed overwhelming victory, but on the other hand in terms of the party vote the proportion of people who voted for DPP remained unchanged, which means there's still close to 35 to 40 per cent who's in favour of DPP and or the so-called Pan Green political party. So the presidential election is not a legislative election, it's a one-on-one decided by the entire population, so the people will vote. So the DPP still has a chance even though it's a difficult one to win the upcoming presidential election.
PODGER: Now Mr Chen's resigned as president, will that help Frank Hsieh who's now taken over as acting chairman of the DPP?
YANG: Yes it will, the Saturday legislative election was widely billed as a vote of no-confidence against President Chen and his government. So that probably serves as what we call the flushing out effect, meaning that the people have sent a message so they will not treat the upcoming March election as another vote of confidence against President Chen Shui-bian. So people probably will treat Frank Hsieh and Ma Ying-Jeou on the same footing and same starting point, and will compare their personal characters and their policy platform and the negative impact of the Chen Shui-bian government will probably be less now.
PODGER: Now if Frank Hsieh does well in the presidential elections, how will Taiwanese politics evolve in 2008 if the KMT is in charge of parliament but the president is from the DPP?
YANG: As a matter of fact actually for a lot of people including a lot of common Taiwanese people, some people indeed worry about this kind of outcome; that it will see the executive and the legislative branches of the government controlled by different political parties. And if Frank Hsieh wins the presidential election he's going to face a legislature overwhelmingly dominated by the KMT. But on the other hand Taiwan has neither an entirely cabinet system or a completely presidential system, it's a so-called semi, or half presidential system. So the gridlock and stalemate between the two political parties may lead nowhere in terms of both political and non-political issues. So a lot of people worry about that indeed.
