More drama from the KMT, this time regarding the nomination of former premier (and Han Kuo-yu’s 2020 running mate) Simon Chang (張善政) as the party’s nominee to be Taoyuan’s next mayor in the upcoming municipal election. The excellent C Donovan Smith writing at Taiwan News tracks the drama, blow by blow:
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4544712
Guy
He resigned from his Taipei city council seat recently and purchased a home in Taoyuan to move his household registration there in order to continue his run.
I love how this guy can just simply get up purchase a house in Taoyuan on a dime to say he lives there. And people will vote for him despite not being Taoyuanian or likely not understanding Taoyuan’s needs. They treat this country like it’s their own chess board to play with.
Tone deaf and out of touch.
Just to be clear for casual readers of this thread: Marco is referring to former Taipei City Councilor Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強), one of the other KMT wannabe candidates, not to Simon Chang.
Remember when former Taipei Mayor Hau parachuted into Keelung to run as a candidate for the legislative yuan? Keelung voters—remember, this had been a KMT stronghold since like forever—said “no.”
We’ll see how this plays out in Taoyuan . . .
Guy
you’d have to be pretty desperate to move to Taoyuan by choice.
sorry Taoyuan, but you never made the earth move for me.
The place is changing, from the terrible pit you no doubt recall to a family friendly municipality for the many people who:
a) cannot afford Taipei City’s ludicrous housing prices; and
b) prefer not to be packed into the former Taipei County’s densest districts.
In short, parts of it seem to have become satellite towns, much like Sanxia, Danshui, and Linkou (and increasingly Keelung too). New people moving in, new demographics—and, as the Keelung case demonstrates, new voting patterns too.
Guy
羅 is quite popular and was refused by the party to run in taoyuan. Dunno why. They are weird and stupid
Eric Chu’s time as party chair is . . . not going great so far:
What are these guys doing.
Guy
It’s not really his fault, the party can’t and won’t solve its core problem/contradiction.
The core of its sub paying members are the 黃復興 old soldiers who are pro-unification. They always pay their membership fees and always vote internally on mass. No leadership candidate for the party cannot succeed without them on their side
The Taiwanese people on the whole and even most of the other KMT/blue people don’t want stronger ties with China and want to move away/decouple.
So every leader needs to try and find a shit compromise where nobody is happy and the party is unelectable
They decided to nominate the gangster family Yen guy for the Taichung by-election.
They decided to skipped the polling and put their preferred candidate Simon Chang in place for the Taoyuan race.
There’s lots of things they are doing that look dubious to me. And what a waste as people must be getting tired of the DPP now with all the COVID chaos.
Guy
Yeah they are weird and just keep talking reforming without doing anything. They still in theory have a large base of blue voters/people who don’t like DPP, but are just incompetent
If they drop/go against the 黃復興 then the party will have no funds
How about proposing policies people actually like. Eric Chu could do that at least. Maybe he is but I’m just not hearing or reading it.
Guy
As long as they still want to allign at some level with China, they are unelectable.
Well at least nationally.
The municipal elections are next. We’ll see how they do, as voters must be pretty fatigued by the DPP and the COVID chaos right now.
Guy
I don’t know a single policy in Taiwan. Most campaigns are based on cross straits issues and then some things like nuclear power.
Neither party seems to care about solving housing problem for example, which would be huge vote winner with young
Ko Wen-je had a bunch of ideas about affordable housing—some drawn from Osaka—in his first term.
What happened with that? I don’t even know.
Guy
He built some affordable housing. I think he has been an ok mayor tbh, the city has improved since Hau. I hope DPP don’t run with Chen, Taipei as capital needs someone younger and more international
Npp and TSS have actual policies to be fair as well
Chen must be exhausted by now. Steering health policy for the duration of the pandemic is enough. The man deserves a break.
Guy
Ko seemed to stop doing things when he had his own party. In the beginning he was doing ok with the bike infrastructure and the Beimen redevelopment.
Since starting his own party, hasn’t done that much
You see him as Presidential? That appears to be his next move.
Guy
No he can’t win, he is too Taipei oriented. His base are the so-called ‘intellectual blues’ and ‘financial blues’. Basically metropolitan blues who are turned off by KMT CCP toadying and the Han populism. Those people are mostly in Taipei