Posted on 11/27/2022 8:26:57 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Something unusual just happened in the wake of the latest round of elections in Taiwan and we should probably be paying closer attention to this. Following the announcement of the election results (which they somehow managed to tally in a single day, though that is now apparently impossible in the United States), President Tsai Ing-wen immediately stepped down as the head of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the ruling party on the island, for now, at least. She’s not leaving office as the President since she wasn’t up for reelection this week. But her party suffered multiple losses in local and municipal mayoral elections. These included a loss to the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) candidate for Mayor of Taipei, the island’s largest city, and an office that has traditionally been a launching point for Taiwanese politicians seeking the presidency. The implications of this apparent shift in public opinion could be very significant. (Wall Street Journal, subscription required)
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen relinquished her seat as head of the island’s ruling party after it lost several key contests in local elections Saturday, foreshadowing political uncertainty amid heightened tensions with China.
In a brief speech after the results came in, Ms. Tsai blamed the ballot-box losses on shortcomings in the Democratic Progressive Party’s approach to local politics. “There is still a gap between people’s expectations and our grassroot work,” she said.
Ms. Tsai’s resignation as party leader came after opposition candidate Chiang Wan-an won a three-horse race for mayor of Taipei, a post that in the past has been a steppingstone to the presidency.
The incoming Mayor of Taipei, Chiang Wan-an, interestingly claims to be a direct descendent of Chiang Kai-shek, who led his people to Taiwan in 1949 after the Chinese Communist Party took control of the mainland. It’s unclear whether that played any sort of role in his victory.
The reason that this development should be of interest to the United States and our allies is the apparent shift in party loyalty and attitudes suggested by the election results. Up until very recently, the DPP and its allied parties in the Pan-Green coalition held a nearly two-to-one advantage in national offices (65-38) over Kuomintang and its partners in the Pan-Blue coalition. But it appears that Kuomintang is experiencing a resurgence.
This is notable because the platform of the Pan-Green alliance as it relates to relations with mainland China calls for the eventual declaration of Taiwanese statehood. Conversely, Kuomintang and the Pan-Blue coalition are in favor of eventual reunification under the Republic of China. You might have guessed that since Kuomintang is labeled as the Chinese Nationalist Party. Tsai Ing-wen is blaming the losses on her party’s failure to reach out on a grassroots level, but this seems like a dramatic shift.
Could it be that a growing number of Taiwan’s citizens are growing weary of the constant threats of invasion from the Chinese mainland and the ongoing saber-rattling between China and the United States? On the one hand, their lives would almost certainly be worse and their freedoms curtailed under the thumb of the CCP. But if China elects to enact a military solution to the reunification issue, it will be the people of Taiwan who pay the price (in blood and treasure) during any sort of Sino-American proxy war, not the people of the United States.
It’s still possible that this was a momentary blip and the DPP will maintain control in Taiwan. But if that’s not the case, America will need to rethink its intentionally vague but recently aggressive policy regarding Taiwan and mainland China. And while it would be a sad outcome for the people of Taiwan, do we really need another proxy war on our hands right now?
They see what the United States is capable of. They’re afraid the US will Ukraine them in an unprovoked proxy war with the other Chinese.
This is not really a good analysis.
Can you tell us why?
Dominion voting machines?
I think it’s probably closer to the truth. People love peace and are often willing to be subjugated just to have piece. They have a dangerous country across the straight that keeps provoking and threatening.
I can imagine doubt entering the Taiwanese population, especially with a US President that can’t be criminally held responsible for anything because he has dementia.
I would urge anyone in politics globally, to be very careful
how much they buy into the descriptions of defeats these
days in the media.
This issue is that the media declares the Left victorious
even if they lose the House or the Senate in our nation, and
I’m pretty sure they label any defeat by more Conservative
acolytes to be a total disaster, even if the loss was by
one vote, and they won more seats than they had before.
That’s just what happened here post the General Mid-Term
election, and many Republicans bought off on it hook line
and sinker.
It’s a cheap propaganda piece for communists taking over true china.
Do women vote in Taiwan?
RE: Do women vote in Taiwan?
Is that a trick question? The president of Taiwan is a woman.
Only after cleaning the house, cooking dinner and ironing clothes are they allowed to go out and vote.
Dominion voting machines?“
The US, Brazil, Taiwan… l a see a pattern.
Do they have to do sammiches too? 🤪😅😂
Peace piece peas !!!
Haha spellcheck fun!!!
Good post, though, good points…
Local election.
Not about China issues.
Bad analysis. Most of these races had nothing to do with China.It was on local issues. For example,the mayor of Taipei. Most of the people were pissed about a renovation of the baseball stadium. For the amount of money they spent on it,they could have built a new one. Instead they redid the old one and did an awful job. The seats have no leg room and the seats behind homeplate have a wall in front of it that unless you are over 6 feet tall, you cant see over it. The field is astroturf and has so many bumps on it, it is like playing on concrete.The star player tripped at the beginning of the season and was out because of injury for the rest of the year. The local party government would not admit they did anything wrong and still claim they did a good job. In another race, their candidate was accused of plagerism on his masters thesis. He denied it, the party backed him, and when people looked into it, the thesis he copied from had the exact spelling errors.
When the votes are counted , the ballot is held up and read out loud and turned around so that observers can see it. Anyone from the public can attend and are allowed to take video. Each party has a rep, that looks at the ballot and confirms what was said is what was written on the ballot . The result is then recorded by 3 separate people on tally sheets, that when the counting is completed, are compared to each other to make sure the count is correct. If so, the totals are reported to the processing center. The totals are televised real time on the networks, so the people can see the actual count.The votes are actually counted right where the voting takes place immediately after the polls close. They are taken to the polling center by police escort for safe keeping. By counting right after the polls close at the place where the votes are taken, there is no possiblity of dumping extra votes in the batch because everyone knows how many people voted at that particular place. By the way, there is voter ID required.
No machinary, except for reporting totals. The ballots are paper and filled in by hand. When the polls are closed, the votes are counted right there by hand. Everyone gets to see the ballot. When the totals are done , they are reported electronically real time to the counting center. Everyone can see the total that was reported. Since everyone knows what the totals were at that place, they know if the correct total was reported. The tv stations have a live running total of all the candidates done real time. All this prevents ballot dumps, which would be so obvious.
Bkmk
Read up on the details of how Taiwan’s so-called elections work.
From the government’s own websites.
There likely hasn’t been a free and fair election in Taiwan in decades.
When Taiwan falls, it will be an internal affair with barely a shot fired in anger.
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