Democracy now
Last weekend people in 17 of Taiwan’s 25 counties voted for a slew of local candidates. We knew it was election season because when we arrived in August, there were already scads of colorful flags and makeshift billboards featuring the smiling, Photoshopped faces of candidates cluttering roads and overpasses.
(Looks like they like change in Taiwan, too. Behind No. 16 is our building.)
For candidates from both of the major parties, the blue pro-China Kuomintang and the green, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, local campaigning is based largely on volume. There have been jingles blasted from megaphones outside our apartment, little caravans of supporters beating drums and cymbals in time on the back of trucks, fireworks rocketing off of moving vehicles and people lifting up signs in unison along busy streets.
Nice volunteers handed us packets of tissues wrapped in their candidate’s face.
Two local KMT officials were knocked out of their spots, widely viewed as an indictment of President Ma Ying-jeou’s recent moves to nudge Taiwan closer to China through a powerful new economic pact, his decision to let more U.S. beef onto the island and bungled relief efforts after Typhoon Morakot. This year, the DPP won 45.32 percent of votes cast, up from 41.95 percent in 2005.
The day after the election, during a visit to the Matsu Temple in the historic city of Lugang, a campaign caravan decked out to look like a tank rolled by. Someone getting a scary jump on the next election?
