Okay, I think the two persons named below are the two Independents (無黨籍).
(1) 高金素梅 無黨籍
But the legislator named above, according to Wikipedia, is a member of the Nonpartisan Solidarity Union, which Wikipedia classifies as a political party:
(2) 陳超明 無黨籍
I’m kind of confused about the legislator named immediately above, because of this, from the above-cited Wikipedia article:
So there’s one non-partisan who belongs to the non-partisan party, and one non-partisan who was apparently involuntarily relieved of his partisan status, and had some fair-sized legal problems to boot, but somehow got re-elected.
The former lawmaker, Kao Chin Su Mei, claims to be independent but always votes blue. She may be more blue than many KMT members!
The Miaoli guy with the chequered past looks to me like a run-of-the-mill corrupt lawmaker from Miaoli. I would expect him to vote based on his interests and not some grand national policy strategy. Corrections are welcome here from forumosans who know more about this character.
So what about the remaining eight TPP lawmakers? What can we expect from them? Here is the key fact that I think is important: The TPP, despite getting a lot of votes at the presidential level, managed to get exactly zero (0) candidates elected at the district level across the nation.
This is important because the balance of power resides entirely with those eight TPP lawmakers who were elected based on the party list votes. They cannot be recalled but if they wander outside party lines (in this case, presumably whatever the hell Ko wants), they can be stripped of their party membership, and be removed from the legislature, and Ko / his party can put someone else in their place (i.e. the TPP doesn’t lose that seat). If those party list lawmakers want to keep their jobs, their salaries, their perks, etc they will then do exactly what Ko says they should do.
I would call these democracies that keep watchlists of people who hold particular opinions flawed at least. Unless those opinions include overthrowing the government (which is - surprise! - not a democratic act).
Is that going in the direction of “A bank denied me a credit card, so Taiwan must be a dictatorship”…?
Otherwise, yes, in a democracy you are free to befriend an opposition leader without fearing to go to prison. Try that in a dictatorship.
Just wondering what ko wenjie really was trying to achieve by running. Realistically he had zero chance of actually winning the presidential race. Surely he was not deluded enough to think he could win? His party is nothing without him. Once he is gone his party will die. He refused a coalition that would have seen him in govt.
What was it all for?
It would have put him as Vice President, which has zero power. Plus, he could have been replaced at any time. Would have saved him from losing face but ultimately pointless. IMO, he ran to bring attention to his legislative candidates. With a presidential candidate on the ticket, his party gets way more attention in the media and the legislative candidates must benefit from that to an extent. For a smaller party, having seats in the legislature is power. You could argue that the TPP is the only winner of this election, they essentially have control of the legislative yuan now, with both major parties needing their help to pass anything.
This is absolutely correct. It’s the same reason James Soong kept running for president all those years—to make sure his party (PFP for Soong; now TPP for Ko) cleared the 5% mark in the party list votes and therefore had representation in the legislature.
And it was SPLENDID. Serves as great proof for the MA lovers that he is pro unification. I only wish I knew a good youtube version with proper mandarin subtitles. That interview pointed out everything people have said about him for over a decade.
In the Mandarin media, did anyone make mention that both CKMT and TPP leaders called Taiwan a province, officially, right on the government made voting information sheets?
That was kind of a huge “fuck you” to Taiwan. Amongst many other pro China little Easter eggs those 2 laid.
