Legislative Elections 2001

Of the English newspapers, only the Taiwan News seems to have any results posted on its site, as of Saturday evening. Also, ICRT is giving commentary.

Things are looking good for the DPP, PFP and TSU, but bad for the KMT and New Party.

The DPP won more seats in the Legislature than expected and managed to hold on to Taipei County, though it didn’t do nearly as well as it would have liked in some other city and county races. It looks like the DPP will have about 15 seats more in the Legislature than the KMT. Who woulda thunk it?

Lien Chan wasn’t being a gracious loser, from what little I heard of him on the news. He’s probably not got much longer at the helm of the party.

The James Soong fan club – um, the People First Party – did well, but not well enough for Soong himself to make it into the Legislature as an at-large member.

The Lee Teng-hui Solidarity Union also did fairly well.

The New Party, which gathered less than 3 percent of the vote, looks dead. Even Elmer Feng lost his seat.

Things went a little better for alleged gangsters, though, with Lo Fu-chu’s son being elected (KMT), along with that guy in Taichung whose name I can’t remember at the moment.

Election results from the Central Election Commission are here:
www.cec90.gov.tw/emain.htm

Great. 34,003 Taiwanese in Taichung County, in their infinite wisdom, elected convicted felon Yen Ching-Biao (

Ahh, the magic of democracy: people can elect whoever they want, regardless of whether it makes any apparent sense or not.

The guy I voted for got elected, at least. Of course, he could be some convicted child-rapist from Burma or something for all I know. Now what am I going to do with this NT$200 that mysteriously appeared on my doorstep?