Crushing election defeat surprised Taiwan’s ‘out of touch’ President Ma

[NewWorldRecord]

Crushing election defeat surprised Taiwan’s ‘out of touch’ President Ma

PUBLISHED : Friday, 05 December, 2014, 10:48am
UPDATED : Saturday, 06 December, 2014, 1:47am

Lawrence Chung in Taipei and Andrea Chen

Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou is guided by a security official on the day he stepped down as the Kuomintang party's chairman. Photo AFP

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou had expected the Kuomintang to be defeated in the weekend’s local elections, but not on such a crushing scale.

Halfway through the vote count on Saturday, a grim-faced Ma led party stalwarts in a bow of apology to supporters as the party conceded a landslide loss to the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party.

On Wednesday, Ma made another apologetic bow to supporters during the KMT central standing committee to take full responsibility for the results before announcing his resignation as party leader.

The KMT was able to hold on to only five of the 16 cities and counties, and one of the six municipalities – losing nine of the cities and counties as well as four of the municipalities it had previously held. It had not suffered such an electoral blow since coming to power in Taiwan 65 years ago.

Ma is no doubt asking himself the question: how could it have happened?

Pundits and local news media have suggested several reasons for the crushing defeats, including the island’s lacklustre economy and growing public resentment about the failure of Ma’s government to halt skyrocketing house prices and narrow the wealth gap.

Alex Chang Chuan-hsien, a political analyst from Academia Sinica said Ma had failed to keep the “633” campaign promise he made during his first presidential election campaign, in 2008 – economic growth of 6 per cent, per capita gross domestic product of US$30,000 and a jobless rate of 3 per cent at most.

However, Saturday’s results were a protest against the handling of opposition protests against cross-strait trade pacts, Chang said.

“The police’s heavy-handed response in dealing with the protests enraged young voters and many other educated people.”

Food safety scandals had broken out over the past two years, which had further damaged his popularity, Chang added.

Other analysts said that Ma was now simply out of touch with the views of many Taiwanese people, which was why more and more supporters were fed up with him and had chosen not to vote for the KMT at last weekend’s polls.

“Ma sincerely believes that he has been addressing the real needs of the public, and done the best job that he could do, but often that has not been the case,” said Hsu Yung-ming, political science professor of Soochow University.

Hsu said Ma was often out of step and thought differently from other people and mistimed some actions; he had been reluctant to resign as KMT chairman to take full responsibility soon after the KMT’s landslide defeat on Saturday.

He finally resign only after angry criticism by party mavericks, but by then he had missed the opportune time, which would have shown him to be acting as a responsible leader who was in tune with the general public’s thinking, Hsu said.

Another incident involving Ma’s dispute with legislature speaker Wang Jin-pyng – over Wang’s alleged improper lobbying in a legal dispute – showed Ma was not a person that could forgive others easily, Hsu said; Ma had shown his by insistence to continue to file an appeal against Wang for alleged illegal lobbying, despite district and high courts both rulings in Wang’s favour.

Professor Arthur Ding, of Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, said the poor performance of Ma’s administration had also led to “two simultaneous negative impacts” in the election.

“Independent-minded younger people below the age of 40 came out to vote for the KMT’s opponents, while older, pro-KMT voters in the past did not vote at all because of disappointment with his leadership,” Ding said.

Some analysts said that the votes gained by the DPP, in its surprising successes in Saturday’s local elections reflected more on how poorly the KMT had performed, rather than how well the DPP had campaigned.

The DPP gained 47.55 per cent of the overall votes cast on Saturday – only seven percentage points more than that achieved by the KMT – but had failed to exceed 50 per cent, which the KMT had been able to secure at some previous elections.

The best total achieved by the DPP in the past is a total of 49.9 per cent of all votes cast in the municipal elections four years ago.