Sunday, November 28, 2010

Taiwan's political system maturing: U.S. scholars

Taipei, Nov. 28 (CNA) The results of Saturday's municipal elections indicate that Taiwan is moving into a mature two-party political system, as both parties came away with something in the polls, visiting American scholars said Sunday.

With the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) securing three of the five municipal seats at stake and the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) winning the total vote share, "nobody really lost in the elections, " said Stanley Rosen, Director of East Asian Studies Center at University of Southern California.

Rosen was among a group of United States-based scholars who visited Taiwan to observe the five special municipality elections, which were seen as midterm polls.

The scholars said they saw other good signs in the elections, such as the DPP's shift to the middle and the restrained reactions of both parties to an election-eve shooting.

Lien Sheng-wen, the son of former vice president Lien Chan, was shot in the face and a bystander was killed at campaign rally for a city councilor candidate less than 12 hours before the polls opened.

Both parties refrained from using the incident as a tool to mobilize voters, the scholars said.

Another observation was that the DPP candidates in the northern cities of Taipei and Xinbei used a lot of pink in their campaign promotion materials, they said.

This signified the party's attempt to move from its hardline "deep green" stance on national identity to the middle of the road to appeal to moderate voters, said Rosen, who has been observing Taiwan politics since the 1970s.

He said he has noticed changes not only in the DPP, but also a long-term trend of "Taiwan-ization" by the KMT to reach out to grassroots Taiwanese.

In the campaign, the DPP strategically avoided issues related to cross-Taiwan Strait affairs and the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China and voters tended to focus more on social and economic issues, said Sam Zhao, Executive Director of Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at University of Denver.

Allen Chaote, Vice President of the Asia Foundation, said he noted something admirable about the Taiwan elections -- there were no ideology-driven achievements.

He made a comparison with the U.S. midterm elections, saying that in both countries domestic and practical issues, rather than foreign policy and international affairs, dominated.

However, in the U.S. the Tea party movement, driven more by ideology than by platforms, was still able to make headway, he said.

"I didn't see this happen in Taiwan," he said.

During their stay, the scholars visited the campaign headquarters of all four candidates of the two parties in Taipei City and Xinbei City, and observed two campaigns in the southern city of Kaohsiung, prior to Saturday's elections. (By Chris Wang) enditem /pc