City council elections

In 1967, the provincial municipality of Taipei was elevated to the status of a special municipality. Kaoshiung became a special municipality in 1979. Special municipalities are under the direct jurisdiction of the central government. First election of council members took place in November 1969 in Taipei and in November 1981 in Kaoshiung. Since then, city council election have been held every four years. Over the years, the number of seats has been increased from 48 to 52 in Taipei and from 42 to 44 in Kaoshiung due to population growth. In elections of city councillors the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) is applied. Under this system, Taipeicity is divided into six geographic constituencies with a district magnitude between seven to eleven (=number of seats) and one aboriginal constituency with one seat only. In Kaoshiung, there are five constituencies with district magnitudes ranging from five to ten and one aboriginal constituency with one seat.

In this election, political parties nominated seventy percent of the 113 candidates in Taipei, and about half of the candidates in Kaoshiung. The DPP nominated 27 of the 113 candidates in Taipei and only 18 of the 114 hopefuls in Kaoshiung. The Kuomintang nominated far fewer candidates this time due to the emergence of the People First Party, which fielded seventeen in the Taipei and nine in the Kaoshiung race (see Table 1). Two political parties took part in city council elections for the first time: the People First Party (PFP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU). The PFP was founded by James Soong after his defeat in the presidential race of March 2000. The new party caused a deep split within the KMT with a significant number of members switching sides. In the following national election, PFP garnered 19 percent of votes (46 out of 225 seats). The party thus proved to be a new major political force in Taiwan’s political landscape. The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) was founded under the spiritual leadership of former president and KMT chair Lee Teng-hui in August 2001 after Lee had announced some time earlier that a new party would bring back stability to Taiwan by supporting incumbent president Chen Shuibian (DPP). Taiwan experienced a political deadlock that lasted for several months after the government made public its plan to scrap the fourth nuclear power plant project (see also Taiwan’s 2001 National and Local Elections). TSU garnered 8 percent of votes (thirteen seats) in national elections held in December 2001.

Mayoral elections

Mayors of special municipalities had been appointed by the premier prior to the passing of the Special Municipality Autonomy Law in July 1994. The first direct election of the mayors of Taipei and Kaoshiung was held in 1994. Voter turnout averaged 80 percent. There were four candidates in Taipei and five in Kaoshiung. In Taipei, KMT candidate and incumbent mayor Huang Ta-chou received 26 percent of the votes cast, NP candidate Jaw Shau-kang 30 percent, DPP hopeful Chen Shui-bian 44 percent, and independent Jih Rong-ze less than 1 percent. This was a crucial victory for the opposition. In Kaoshiung, however, the KMT proved to be more successful. KMT candidate and incumbent mayor Wu Den-yih garnered 55 percent of the votes, DPP’s Chang Chunhsiung 39 percent, NP hopeful Tang A-ken 3 percent, and the other candidates 3 percent.

In December 1998, the second direct mayoral election took place. There were three candidates in Taipei. Former justice minister Ma Ying-jeou was nominated by the KMT, incumbent mayor Chen Shui-bian by the DPP, and Wang Chien by the NP. Ma won with 51.1 percent of the votes. Incumbent mayor Chen received 45.9 percent and the New Party’s hopeful the remaining 3 percent. Voter turnout was 80 percent in both Taipei and Kaoshiung, where four candidates contested. Incumbent mayor Wu Den-yi (KMT) received 48.13 percent and was voted out of office by a margin of 78,000 votes by former legislator Frank Hsieh of the DPP. The NP candidate Wu Chien-kuo received only 0.8 percent and independent Cheng Teh-yao 2.4 percent of the valid votes cast.

In this election, there were two candidates in Taipei. Incumbent mayor Ma Ying-jeou was nominated by the KMT and former political prisoner and legislator Lee Ying-yuan by the DPP. In Kaoshiung, five hopefuls took part in the election. Incumbent mayor Frank Hsieh was nominated by the ruling DPP and Huang Jun-ying by the KMT. Three independent candidates took also part in the Kaoshiung race: Chang Po-ya, Shih Ming-teh, and Huang Tien-shen.

Election Results

The mayoral election results were a foregone conclusion in Taipei and a small surprise in Kaohsiung. Incumbent mayor Ma Ying-jeou (KMT) won the race in Taipei with 64.11 percent of the votes, and in Kaoshiung incumbent mayor Frank Hsieh (DPP) received slightly more votes (24,838 votes) than his main rival Huang Jun-ying (KMT) despite opinion polls that suggested Hsieh would lose the battle (see Table 2).

Ma Ying-jeou's strategy was not to talk too much about specific future policies nor go into details of what has been achieved during his term. Instead, he tried to give the voters the impression that there are many problems but there is no need to worry because there is still Ma, who cares about the people.His campaign ads in Taiwan's media, for instance, frequently focused on the issue of rising unemployment and the lack of unity among the electorate due to the polarization of the populace between the blue and green camps, urging the electorate to be united and support him (see Advertisement 1, 2, 3, and 4). In his campaign speech on election eve, Ma spent most of his time telling the audience that we all work hard everyday and that life sometimes is difficult but we still have Ma to rely on, giving the electorate once again the impression of a good brother who will always be here if help is needed. Ma relied on his charisma whereas his opponent, Lee Yingyuan, relied on history and on offering "beef" ?more social welfare to the residents of Taipei. His campaign team, for instance, placed a series of ads in Taiwan's mass media promising every unemployed person between 35 and 50 years of age a monthly subsidy of NT$10,000 for the period of one year, and every single mother with a child under 12 years of age a monthly stipend of NT$5,000 (see Advertisement 5).

Apart from social welfare policies, history was again a key element in the DPP's mayoral campaign strategy. In his campaign speeches and televised ads, Lee once again stressed his suffering during the white terror that lasted until the early 1990s. Televised ads tried to remind the voters of the dark times and of the fact that Lee Ying-yuan was blacklisted by the KMT government for his involvement in anti-KMT activities. A group of former schoolmates also put ads in masscirculating daily newspapers showing a large photo of Ma and claiming that he was a spy for the KMT government while studying in the US (see Advertisement 6). The group strongly criticized Ma for being on the side of the dictator during the most crucial period of time in Taiwan's history of democratic development. Nevertheless, the electorate seemed to care little about Ma's alleged spying activities. It may be important for the people of Taiwan to discuss their history and the involvement of current politicians in the suffering of political opponents during the reign of white terror, but election campaigns are no longer the right place to talk about history. People have heard too much of such stories during the last 10 years and are no longer willing to talk about the old times.

The DPP's campaign strategy in the Taipei race changed compared with previous elections in the sense that Lee campaign team refrained from relying on traditional campaign methods such as large street rallies. There maybe various reasons for this, but one of the key ones is simply that voters do not know why they should join such rallies. The support of civil groups for the DPP seems to be vanishing, especially after the farmer's and fishermen's demonstration of Nov. 23 when over 100,000 people took to the streets of Taipei. Numerous former civil groups that supported the DPP in the past turned out this time urging the electorate not to vote for DPP candidates. Full-page ads in mass-circulating newspapers requesting the voters not to vote green were common (see Advertisement 7). This all made Ma Ying-jeou's election victory a foregone conclusion.

In Kaohsiung, the election victory of DPP candidate Frank Hsieh was more of a surprise given the fact that claims of Hsieh's involvement in the Zanadau scandal seemed to do him serious harm. Apart from the scandal, the public in general feels discontent with current government economic policies. Taiwan's economy has been challenged by a recession and record unemployment. GDP has shrunk considerably throughout the last years while the nation's economists speak of the steepest GDP decline since the oil crisis of the 1970s. Much blame for the poor economy had been pinned on the DPP government. In addition, the farmer's and fishermen's demonstration and the subsequent resignation of key government members once again conveyed the message of an inefficient government. Perhaps dissatisfied voters did not go to the polls instead of voting for the KMT. With election turnout averaging 71 percent, the Kaohsiung election had the lowest turnout ever.

But whatever the turnout, the KMT candidate lost the election, leaving James Soong standing in the rain after his ridiculous performance in Taipei, when he kneeled down begging for votes in support of Ma. James Soong’s People First Party refrained from nominating its own candidates in the mayoral race. The party decided to support the KMT candidates instead.

In the city council elections, the DPP and the KMT received one third of the seats each in Taipei, and in Kaoshiung the DPP won more seats than the KMT for the first time in history. TSU performed poorly in Taipei and in Kaoshiung. In total, only two out of the fourteen candidates got elected. Surprisingly, the New Party had five out seven hopefuls elected. James Soong’s People First Party had a meagre showing in Taipei where fewer than half of the party’s candidates were voted into office. The Green Party once again failed to get enough popular support (see Table 3 and Table 4).

It is interesting to note that the KMT for the first time practiced the forced vote distribution system (pei piao). In previous elections, it had been the party's strategy to support those candidates with higher popularity ratings in opinion surveys and to neglect the others. The KMT obviously has learned from its previous election defeats. Only one of the 21 KMT candidates in Taipei was not elected. Pei piao is a rational system based on the fact that the chance of someone being born on Monday is the same as of someone being born on Tuesday and has been successfully practised by the DPP for a long time. In this election, for instance, the KMT nominated five candidates in the third district of Taipei. The party gave each of its five candidates two single-digit numbers, i.e. zero and one to the first candidate, two and three to the second and so forth. Party supporters were urged to vote for the candidate whose number coincides with the last digit of their National Identity Number (shenfenzheng zihao). If most KMT supporters followed the strategy, each candidate should receive an equal amount of votes. In other districts, the KMT nominated two, three or four candidates. In these cases, the party instructed the supporters to cast their votes according to the month in which they were born (see Advertisement 8).

Christian Schafferer is an assistant professor in the Department of International Trade at the Overseas Chinese Institute of Technology.