After a long campaign that filled Taiwan with colorful posters and rallies last month, Saturday’s municipal elections dealt a heavy blow to the sovereign government on this “de facto” independent island claimed by China. headed by the President of the Republic Tsai Ing-wenThe Democratic Progressive Party (PDP) suffers a serious setback at the hands of the opposition Kuomintang, which won 13 of the 21 cities and counties in the race, including four of Taiwan’s six largest metropolitan areas.
Among them is the capital Taipei, which the Kuomintang recaptured after eight years thanks to the nomination of the Kuomintang Chiang Wan Anthe dictator’s grandson Chiang Kai-shek, who fled to Taiwan after losing the civil war against communist revolutionary Mao Zedong in 1949. Also known as Wayne Chiang because he was educated and worked in the United States, he will be the youngest mayor of Taipei at 43 years old and takes up a stormy family drama. His father, Deputy Prime Minister Chiang Hsiao-yen, was the illegitimate son of Chiang Kai-shek’s eldest son, making him the new heir to this long political dynasty but not by the official branch.
If Chiang Wan-an and the Kuomintang emerge as the main winners on election night, then the total defeat is President Tsai Ing-wen. Following a landslide re-election in January 2020, when he profited from Chinese repression in Hong Kong and scored a record-breaking eight million votes, Tsai elevated this election as a referendum on his administration and, above all, on his remarkable vote. Sovereign speech against Beijing’s demand. This came on Thursday in a video of the voters in it He appealed to Taiwanese patriotism In the face of the reunification declared by the Chinese regime and the rapprochement with the continent advocated by the Kuomintang.
But according to most political analysts, in defeating Tsai’s party, the impact of Covid prevailed more than relations with mainland China. anyway Taiwan was one of the countries that best controlled the epidemic After the outbreak in Wuhan in January 2020, its severe restrictions until the beginning of this year inflicted great damage on the economy and its reopening since May has resulted in deaths. After six years in power, and with the pandemic raging, the Democratic Progressive Party should have done a very good job of not suffering from political fatigue from the electorate.
However, the Greens maintain their strongholds in the south of the island, Tainan and Kaohsiung, in the face of the KMT’s overwhelming Blue victory. Although it is no consolation in the face of defeat, the PDP seizes the KMT from the islands. kinmen and bingo, The closest to China, after the military tension last summer due to the visit of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
Assuming she’s defeated, Chief Tsai Ing-wen He resigns as chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, which must search for a candidate to win over the electorate before the 2024 general election. For the next appointment, this win gives wings to the Kuomintang, whose chairman, Eric Chu, prefers to be wise because the same thing happened in the election. Mayor of 2018. That year, the government was defeated and then swept in the 2020 presidential election by taking advantage of anti-Chinese sentiment to crush Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, which in Taiwan were seen as advancing their intentions on this island it considers “rebellious”. There is still over a year before the general election, and as things stand, anything can happen in the Straits of Formosa.
