Mayor Schmayor
The winner of Taipei Mayoral Election, Hao Lung-bin.
It feels like forever since I’ve posted on this blog. Most of my online opining about Taiwan politics has lately been solely on Forumosa. But the Taiwan Politics forum over there has been boring me lately. Others too, I think. People just aren’t bothering to comment on things anymore. This is not to say the politics has been dull, it hasn’t. Perhaps it’s been just too much. It always seems like politics is too much in Taiwan.
The Taipei and Kaohsiung mayor elections were held today. The DPP candidate in Kaohsiung, Chen Chiu, appears to have scraped a win by the skin of her teeth, just about 100 votes among something like 1.5 million cast. There will be a recount, but there are a lot of relieved greens. A loss of both cities would have been very depressing.
The Taipei race was never in question. James Soong did his best to help the DPP again, trying to soothe his ego by cutting into the blue vote. But the voters seemed to have none of it and voted for KMT guy Hao Lung-bin. This is what I don’t understand.
Hao is son of Hao Pei-tsun, a strong candidate for most corrupt and traitorous general Taiwan, or the ROC if you prefer, ever had. But so far, nothing hs been pinned on the elder Hao. It was just a coincidence that he visited France just before Taiwan finalized a purchase of warships from Korea, and the deal was switched to purchase from France instead just days after he returned. The French and Swiss parties to the deal basically admit that huge bribes were paid. Hao simply says it wasn’t his call, and he didn’t take bribes. End of story.
So nearly 60% of Taipei votes for the guy’s son, even as they are willing to hold their city in the lurch repeatedly by condoning huge rallies against President Chen whom they hate and accuse of sowing “ethnic division.” Corruption is the stick they use the most to beat Chen with. But they insist any leaders they would choose are above corruption.
One of their cited reasons that Chen is irredeemable is that his son-in-law appears to be guilty of insider trading. You know what they say, like son-in-law, like father.
It is also quite stunning just how uncharismatic Hao (the son) is. He doesn’t appear to have a lot to say most of the time. His face is not very expressive at all. He basically coasted to victory, drawing some criticism for not campaigning hard. This contrasts sharply with Mayor Ma, whom he will be replacing. Hao wasn’t actually Ma’s man originally. But Ma’s favorite candidate withdrew from the KMT nomination battle after speaking too freely. Haven’t heard a word about him since.
To his credit, Hao has been quite independent politically over the past few years. He used to be in the New Party (think far-right wing), and he was actually head of the Environment Department (?) for President Chen back when Chen had non-DPP members in his cabinet. Hao was responsible for the change in plastic bag rules. I think the new bags and rules are pretty dumb. Hah.
My wish is that Chen Chiu does a great job in Kaohsiung and Hao does dick all for Taipei. Eventually people will learn their lessons. By the way, in case you’re not up on Taiwan politics, the DPP candidate defeated by the illustrious Hao was Frank Hsieh, who would be Mayor of Kaohsiung right now, except he stepped down to become Premier under President Chen. Now he’s jobless I guess. He’s a possible for next DPP presidential candidate, but that’s a bit unlikely. He’s a really energetic guy who did a whole lot of good for Kaohsiung. Of course the blues say he ruined the economy there, because the port has dropped several notches on the global tonneage rankings during his tenure, and the local unemployment rate tends to be a bit higher than the national average. I’d say thats picky. At least it’s a somewhat nice city now. It has made a lot of improvements during the time Ma did little for Taipei other than see Taipei 101 through to completion.