Attention is popping to Taiwan’s next presidential election in 2024 after the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was thrashed at local elections on Saturday, with President Tsai Ing-wen’s move to concentrate on China backfiring with voters.
The major opposition party the Kuomintang, or KMT, romped to victory within the mayoral and county elections, winning 13 of the 21 seats up for grabs, including the rich and cosmopolitan capital Taipei, according to expectations.
None of those elected have direct say in policy on China.
China views the island as its own territory and has been ramping up military activities to claim those claims, fueling global concern especially given Taiwan’s major role as a semiconductor producer.
The KMT traditionally favors close ties with China but strongly denies being pro-Beijing. It had been on the back foot since 2020’s presidential election loss, and in addition suffered a blow last December after 4 referendums it had championed as a show of no confidence in the federal government failed.
Talking to reporters late on Saturday at party headquarters, its chairman Eric Chu said the KMT understood that only by uniting could it win.
“Taiwan’s people have given us a possibility,” he said. “Being selfless is the one likelihood that the KMT could win the 2024 election.”
Tsai resigned as DPP chairwoman after the defeat, the worst showing within the party’s history, and is now left with just five mayor or county chief positions.
She had framed the vote as being about showing defiance to China’s rising bellicosity, especially after it held war games near the island in August and President Xi Jinping, who has vowed to bring Taiwan under Chinese control, won an unprecedented third term in office last month.
But Tsai’s strategy did not mobilize voters, who disassociated geopolitics from the local elections which traditionally focus more on issues from crime to pollution.
Turnout on Saturday was at record low, just 59% for Taiwan’s six most vital cities, in comparison with an overall figure of around 75% in 2020.
China has been distracted with its own internal problems, including unrest linked to its zero-COVID policy.
Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said last week Taiwan was seeing less Chinese interference ahead of the local elections, possibly attributable to China’s own domestic problems and its efforts to enhance its international image.
DPP Secretary-General Lin Hsi-yao told reporters the party will perform a “review” of what went mistaken, declining to comment directly on their tactic of creating the China issue such a very important one.
The KMT had focused its campaign on issues just like the COVID-19 pandemic, especially after a surge in cases this yr and whether the federal government favored a neighborhood vaccine over imported ones.
In a Sunday editorial, Taiwan’s pro-DPP Liberty Times newspaper said it was tougher to motivate voters at local elections using “abstract political ideas”, and warned the DPP could face distracting splits in deciding its 2024 presidential candidate.
“Tsai Ing-wen’s second term is halfway through, and the difficulty of successionmay breed internal contradictions, damaging the combat effectiveness of getting all guns pointing outwards.”
Vice President William Lai, considered by party sources the most certainly candidate for 2024 and who took a high profile campaigning role for the local polls, apologized on his Facebook page on Saturday for the poor performance, but didn’t address his future.
Still, the DPP did recuperate after an analogous trouncing in 2018’s local elections to win a landslide on the presidential and parliamentary polls in 2020, after successfully portraying a vote for the KMT as a vote for China within the wake of a bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.
The KMT bristles at accusations it’s going to sell out Taiwan to China or is just not committed to democracy, but accuses the DPP of deliberately hyping confrontation with Beijing for political profit.
The DPP denies this and Tsai has repeatedly offered to carry talks with China, which have been rejected as Beijing views her as a separatist.
“The KMT’s landslide victory doesn’t suggest a pro-Beijing political atmosphere in Taiwan is being shaped. The KMT is just not a pro-Beijing party, either,” said Huang Kwei-bo, an associate professor of diplomacy at Taipei’s National Chengchi University and a former KMT deputy secretary general.