Taiwan Election Notebook - FEER Editors' Blog

The day after the election, a delegation of mostly American scholars led by Suisheng Zhao of Denver University spoke at a roundtable sponsored by the New Taiwanese Cultural Foundation. The following videos are from the second panel, which discussed “Implications for US-Taiwan and Cross-Strait Relations.”

Douglas Paal, a former director of the American Institute in Taiwan:

Youtube video here

Alan Romberg, a senior associate at the Stimson Center:

Youtube video here

Michael Swaine, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment:

Youtube video here

Ma Ying-jeou’s victory was no surprise, but the margin of victory exceeded most expectations. The New York Times, for example, reported the day before the vote that “the suppression of Tibet protests by Chinese security forces, as well as missteps by the Nationalist Party, which Beijing favors, have nearly erased what had seemed like an insuperable lead for Ma Ying-jeou.” A delegation of American political scientists organized a betting pool on the outcome, with the predictions of the gap ranging from 300,000 to 1.2 million votes. The actual margin was more than 2.2 million, or nearly 17% of the vote.

But in fact the result was very much in line not only with pre-election polls, but also with other elections over the last three years. Ever since President Chen Shui-bian won re-election in 2004 with just over 50% of the vote, support for the DPP has collapsed. In local-level and legislative elections since 2005, the party’s share of the popular vote has been stuck at 39%, the same proportion that Hsieh Chang-ting won yesterday. Essentially the party was pushed back to its core “deep green” supporters plus a small portion of the “light green” vote, with many moderate party supporters defecting to the KMT.

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Today turned out to be a bit of a wild goose chase. At around 1:30 p.m., I headed over to the Ma-Siew Campaign headquarters. Several hundred sweaty reporters, cameramen and TV crews crammed into an area the size of a tennis court for the last press conference by Mr. Ma before the polls.

In a pre-emptive strike against dirty tricks  by the DPP and its friends (including Therese Shaheen), Mr. Ma warned journalists to be on the look out for last minute ploys and conspiracies.

“From now until midnight you will be seeing some retired U.S. officials or U.S. elected representatives coming out accepting interviews with the media saying that my green card continues to have validity,” he said. “I call upon my supporters not to react… I don’t know why they are doing this but they might have some idea of affecting the result of our election.”

Mr. Ma then went on to deny (yet again) the whole green-card affair: “I want to emphasize again that I have already abandoned my green card more than 20 years ago. Actually, I moved back to Taiwan with my whole family in 1981. I established my residency here for the last 27 years. During these 27 years I was away from the United States at least more than five times with a period of exceeding one year. And I have obtained more than 20 years ago the B-1/B-2 visa and I have been using that ever since. For those of us who understand the American immigration law practice, once you apply and have been granted a nonimmigrant visa that means your green card has lapsed or has been abandoned. This has been a fact for the last 20 odd years.”

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A few minutes ago, Ma Ying-jeou canceled his afternoon events and addressed reporters, saying that a former American Institute in Taiwan official (obviously Therese Shaheen) is going to give media interviews today to say that his U.S. “green card” is still valid. Mr. Ma repeated his denial that he still has his green card from the 1980s, pointing out that he has been out of the U.S. for many years, and has entered the U.S. on a non-immigrant visa since then, both of which cause a green card to be cancelled.

Ms. Shaheen was fired by the Bush administration for exceeding her mandate by giving a blank check to the Chen administration, so that it could provoke mainland China in order to win domestic support, while the U.S. was left to deal with a saber-rattling Beijing. I had dinner with her Sunday night, and it was clear that while she has very little understanding of Taiwanese politics, she is unreservedly committed to Mr. Chen and the DPP. If Mr. Ma is right and Ms. Shaheen does speak today, it is likely that in the little time left before the election Taiwanese voters will not be able to learn about her vested interest in helping the DPP. As a former U.S. official, her statements may be taken at face value, unless specifically refuted by current AIT officials.

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I traveled down to Taichung via high-speed rail today to meet with Mayor Jason Hu. Mr. Hu is somewhat of a rockstar in Tawianese politics. A high-ranking member of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), he has been mayor of Taiwan’s third most populous city since 2001. If you believe all the hype that surrounds the amenable Mr. Hu, then it was he who, almost single-handedly, brought Taichung back from the brink of economic despair that followed a wave of hollowing out caused by local industry fleeing to the mainland in the 1980s. A particularly disasterous earthquake in 1999 didn’t exactly help either.

But today, as we sit in the 14th floor visitor lobby in the luxury apartment building where he lives, the focus of our talk is on Saturday’s presidential election. In particular, on Ma Ying-jeou, the KMT candidate who polls project will be the winner. High above the streets of Taichung, Mr. Hu outlined his hopes for the new presidency under Mr. Ma:

“I really want him to be a president of all people, not just for a party, or part of the people. I think he can do it. I also want him to be a president that respects the Constitution and the system, and not to be too aggressive or over-reactive,” Mr. Hu told me. “I really want him to be a president that respects parliament. Not to find a way—because he has absolute majority in the party—to bypass the Constitution, or even revise the Constitution . . . I really want to see Ma Ying-jeou to be a leader, to be able to communicate with the PRC, to maintain a channel of dialogue and improve the situation both in terms of economic issues, military issues and diplomatic issues.”

But Mr. Ma’s first priority must be the economy, he stressed.

On China, Mr. Hu said: “I think both Beijing and Taipei know that if we are going to do anything to improve the existing situation, we have to put the sensitive issue of sovereignty on the shelf.” Later he said that he believed both Beijing and Taipei, and that means Mr. Ma, are “pragmatic and wise enough” to do this.

Mr. Hu said he truly believed that what we are seeing these days is a “new KMT.” “If you watch television, all the time all the talk shows they are attacking a ghost of the KMT that no longer exists,” he says. Yet that is not to say that Mr. Ma will have an easy ride with his party, however. “There will be people—like me—who will say the things that we need to say . . . we are not “yes” men. We don’t say nice things. We are those people who want to see Taiwan and Ma do well, and we will not spare any effort to say what we need to say,” he said.

Mr. Hu lashed out strongly at the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Frank Hsieh on his handling of the Tibet issue, saying that he resisted the very strong temptation to call a press conference and say: “I beg Frank Hsieh to be united with Ma on the Tibet issue. Point your accusing finger to Beijing and not to Ma! What are you doing?”

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I went to Taichung to see candidate Ma Ying-jeou “sao jie” (literally, “sweep the streets” - i.e. stump for Saturday’s election). But I got there late and never caught up with him.

Hsieh may be feeling the same come Saturday night - if all the analysts I spoke to today are right, that is. They say Tibet, Wen Jiabao’s remarks Tuesday and the “one China market” scare campaign have all helped Hsieh - but it won’t be enough for him to catch Ma.

Having missed Ma, I made the best of it and got some “man on the street” quotes from Taichung residents. I was especially keen to take the city’s temperature, as central Taiwan is up for grabs in the island’s elections. Northern Taiwan is KMT-held, southern Taiwan is pro-DPP. But Taichung - along with Chiayi, Changhua and Yunlin counties - are more evenly split.

I can hardly say I got a scientific sample, but it was an entertaining visit nonetheless.

First there was the obligatory cab driver chat, on the way into town from the high-speed rail. The cab driver quote is so cliched that it should be banned from journalism. But this guy, Huang Ching-fu, was straight out of DPP central casting.

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Looking at its advertisements, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Hsieh campaign is desperate. One example: Newspaper ads that stereotype mainland Chinese and panders to anti-immigration sentiment. One even goes so far as to show men urinating in a public park, suggesting that if Ma Ying-jeou wins the election, Taiwan will be flooded with uncouth cousins from across the Strait who spit and falsify their academic credentials.

Reuters reports here on the negative campaigning. The ad in question was captioned, “After the common market, parks become public toilets, speaking becomes spitting.” Another shows a grinning farmer holding a clearly bogus diploma from Peking University.

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The jury is still out as to whether the Tibet issue will have a significant impact on the presidential election campaign. If the DPP has its way, of course, it will. It is just the type of emotive issue that matches the party’s election campaigning style. Last night’s DPP-led vigil (read rally) for Tibet at Taipei’s Daan Forest Park showed just exactly how emotions on the issue could run high.

Between one to two thousand people filled the amphitheater and its surrounding muddy slopes. DPP leaders, including presidential candidate, Frank Hsieh, led the crowd in an emotionally charged performance of song, dance and rhetoric. To the strains of sentimental folk songs, a giant Tibetan flag was passed over the heads of the spectators. An Olympic-style torch lit up the center stage, behind it a large banner which read, in English, “Free Tibet.” It was enough to make one cry. That’s exactly what Hwai Li was doing when I spotted him holding a candle at the back of the audience.

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What would a Ma Ying-jeou administration look like? To get a glimpse of Taiwan’s possible future, should Mr. Ma claim victory in Saturday’s polls, Colum Murphy spoke with KMT legislator and top foreign-policy adviser to the Ma campaign, Su Chi. In the course of the exclusive interview with the REVIEW, Mr. Su spoke of economics, irresponsible fear mongering by the DPP, the violence in Tibet, and Taipei’s thorny relations with Beijing.

Mr. Su believes a victory for Mr. Ma would be good news for Hu Jintao. On the other hand, a win for Frank Hsieh could cast a dark shadow over Mr. Hu’s legacy, as Taiwan would have edged closer to independence on his watch. A DPP administration would “spell danger,” says Mr. Su. “With the DPP in power, I think China would have to reassess its Taiwan policy. And I don’t want to guess what that would be,” he adds.

For the full transcript, read more below.

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At Ma Ying-jeou’s press conference for foreign journalists yesterday, there weren’t many of the target audience in attendance — probably because the campaign doesn’t do a very good job of alerting journalists to events, unlike the DPP. The local press corps was out in force, however, and applauded when Mr. Ma arrived.

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