[ad_1]
TAIPEI (Taiwan) Nov. 26 (AP) — Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen resigned early after the Democratic Progressive Party lost local elections.
Tsai thanked supporters in a short speech on Saturday night, a tradition after major losses. She said she would take responsibility because she hand-picked the candidates in Saturday’s election.
Voters in Taiwan overwhelmingly chose the opposition Kuomintang in several major races on the self-governing island in Saturday’s election, in which lingering concerns about the threat from China gave way to more local issues.
KMT mayoral candidate Jiang Wanan has won a closely watched seat in the capital, Taipei.
“I will show the world how great Taipei is,” he said in his victory speech Saturday night. Other KMT candidates also won mayoral seats in Taoyuan, Taichung and New Taipei City.
By the time he spoke, not all the ballots had been officially counted, but Chiang Kai-shek and the other candidates were ahead enough to declare victory.
Gao Hongan, a candidate for the relatively new Taiwan People’s Party, won the mayor’s seat in Hsinchu, home to many Taiwanese semiconductor companies.
Taiwanese choose mayors, city council members and other local leaders in all 13 counties and nine cities. A referendum was also held to lower the voting age from 20 to 18.
While international observers and the ruling party have tried to link the election to a long-term existential threat to Taiwan’s neighbor, many local experts don’t think China will play much this time around.
“The international community has raised the stakes too high. They have raised local elections to the international level, and Taiwan’s survival,” said Wang Yeli, a political science professor at National Taiwan University.
During the campaign, there was little mention of China’s massive military drills targeting Taiwan in August in response to a visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
“So I think if you can’t even bring this up in Taipei,” Wang said. “You don’t even need to think about being in a southern city.”
Instead, the campaign is firmly local: air pollution in downtown Taichung, traffic congestion in Nangang, Taipei’s tech hub, and the island’s COVID-19 vaccine procurement strategy, which left the island in short supply during last year’s outbreak.
The failure of the ruling DPP may be due in part to its handling of the pandemic.
“Although Taiwan has done relatively well in epidemic prevention, the DPP still has some dissatisfaction with it,” said Huang Weihao, a political science professor at National Sun Yat-sen University.
At an elementary school in New Taipei City, near Taipei City, voters young and old came early despite the rain.
Yu Meizhu, 60, said she came to vote for the current mayor, Hou Youyi. “I think he is doing a good job, so I want to continue to support him. I believe in him and believe that he can improve our environment and transportation infrastructure in New Taipei City.”
President Tsai Ing-wen also came out to vote early on Saturday morning, surprising many voters when her security guards and entourage stormed the school.
As the chairman of the ruling party, Tsai Ing-wen publicly expressed her “anti-China protection of Taiwan” many times during the campaign. But Chen Shih-chung, a Communist Party candidate running for mayor of Taipei, raised the issue of the Communist threat only a few times before quickly turning back to local issues because there was little interest, experts said.
“If the DPP loses many county seats, then their ability to govern will face a very big challenge,” said You Yinglong, chairman of the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation, which conducts regular public surveys on political issues.
You said that the election results to some extent also reflected the public’s attitude towards the performance of the ruling party in the past two years.
Some feel apathy towards the local race. “From a policy standpoint, it feels like everyone is pretty much the same,” said Sean Tai, 26, a hardware store employee.
Day declined to say who he voted for, but hoped someone would raise Taipei’s profile and lead to better economic prospects while maintaining the status quo with China.
“We don’t want to be completely blocked. I really want Taiwan to be seen internationally,” he said. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
[ad_2]
Source link