Democratic Progressive Party Candidate Wins Big in-- Taoyuan County Executive By-Election

The murder of Taoyuan county magis-trate Liu Pang-you has yet to be solved, but the work of the county government must go on. After an intensive race among candidates from the three main political parties, Lu Hsiu-lien of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won an overwhelming victory in the by-election. This could be seen as a heat for the upcoming elections for city and county executives across Taiwan at the end of 1997. After their defeat, the Kuomintang (KMT) and New Party (NP) assessed the results to come up with a new approach to the year-end elections.

Trying to seize the nine-month job of replacement Taoyuan county magistrate, at the Chinese New Year the KMT's Fang Li-hsiu (mayor of Chungli), the DPP's Lu Hsiu-lien (a National Policy Advisor), and the NP's Lai Lai-kun (a legislator) engaged in a frenzied battle. Ballots were cast on March 15. Lu defeated Fang by a margin of nearly 110,000 votes, far beyond expectations. After 18 years in KMT hands, the Taoyuan county magistrate post returned to the opposition.

Early in the race, key figures from all three parties came to Taoyuan to support their respective candidates. For the KMT, President (and KMT chair) Lee Teng-hui, VP and Premier Lien Chan, Taiwan Governor James Soong, National Assembly Speaker Frederick Chien, KMT Secretary-General Wu Po-hsiung, Vice-Premier Hsu Li-teh, Foreign Minister Winston Chang, Minister without Portfolio Ma Ying-jeou, and other heavyweights all came to Taoyuan. Of these, Wu Po-hsiung, originally from Taoyuan and an influential figure in Hakka circles (there are many Hakka in Taoyuan), made an especially dedicated effort.

For the DPP, a special election support committee was created, staffed by the vice-chiefs of various departments from the party center. Taipei Mayor Chen Shui-bian served as chair of Lu Hsiu-lien's campaign. DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang, himself a former Taoyuan county magistrate, worked Taoyuan personally, reviving memories of the Taoyuan county magistrate race of two decades ago by repeating his confrontation with Wu Po-hsiung.

In contrast, the NP, wracked by internal struggles, had less than ideal mobilization for the campaign.

According to a KMT public opinion poll, Fang led Lu by 1.5 percentage points on the eve of the election, equivalent to about a 10-20,000 vote victory over Lu. When the news got out, Lu frantically appealed for support, while the KMT waited in anticipation of victory. Thus the results were startling, especially to the KMT: Lu got 324,074 votes to Fang's 216,325. This suggests that the KMT's "presidential card" does not carry as much weight as expected, and it was also a blow to the KMT's traditional strategy of reliance on local factions.

Why? First, the murder of Liu Pang-you exposed corruption and collusion among officials, business, and the underworld. And the failure of local government was reflected in the fact that the long-running problem of garbage disposal remained unresolved. Looking at the record, voters thought, "why not change the party in charge?"

Second, Lu Hsiu-lien offered strong personal credentials: a strong academic record, a clean and fresh image, a background as a leader in the women's movement, and her imprisonment as an early democratic activist back in the early 1980s. She also showed a far-reaching boldness for running the county for "four years and nine months" (i.e. the nine-month replacement term plus an expected victory in the regular year-end contest). Fang, meanwhile, portrayed hmself as just filling in the nine month term.

With this win in Taiwan's second most populous county, the DPP now has a larger population in the cities and counties it controls than does the KMT; its influence appears to be rising. The victory has greatly shored up morale in the party, which was at a low ebb because of the splitting off of the new Taiwan Independence Party. The victory also solidified the reputation of DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang and bolstered his reform efforts.

As for the New Party, which was dispirited by intra-party wrangling, Lai Lai-kun's vote total of 45,000 was a two-thirds drop from the nearly 120,000 votes for NP candidates in Taoyuan in the last Legislative Yuan elections. The party did not even reach the minimum vote total for public financing for the campaign. This result should be a wake-up call for the NP.

In the KMT, after Wu Po-hsiung offered his resignation to accept responsibility for the defeat but was persuaded to stay on, the party decided to change its strategy for nominations for the year-end elections. It has been indicated that an important consideration in nominations will be whether a candidate has "campaign cells."

The raucous election is over. Besides reassessing their own performances, the three parties must now together look to the transformation of the overall political environment. Voter turnout was less than 60%. The three parties must ask themselves whether this means many people have lost faith in all the parties, or have lost interest in local government altogether.

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With her incorruptible and fresh image, Democratic Progressive Party candidate Lu Hsiu-lien swept the by-election for Taoyuan County executive. The shock defeat has sparked calls for reassessment within the Kuomintang. (photo by Wu Kuang-hua)