UPDATE3: DPP’s Tsai takes early lead in Taiwan presidential election

Early results from Taiwan’s closely watched presidential held Saturday showed Tsai Ing-wen of the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party leading the race over her main contender, Eric Chu, of the China-friendly Nationalist Party (KMT), with a quarter of the ballots tallied.

If Tsai wins, she will be Taiwan’s first female president in addition to being only the second DPP president in the island’s history.

Given the pro-independence ethos of the DPP, it is being watched whether a Tsai victory will lead to continued stability in cross-strait relations. She has pledged to maintain the status quo between Taiwan and China.

She is running for president for the second time after losing to current leader Ma Ying-jeou in 2012.

Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. and closed at 4 p.m. Results are expected to be known later in the evening. There are some 18 million eligible voters.

The third candidate in the race is People First Party leader James Soong.

With the KMT struggling in opinion polls, Tsai had a sizable lead over her rivals during campaigning.

Seeking to secure more votes, all parties campaigned to court centrist voters who outnumber those identifying themselves with the DPP and KMT, according to the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University.

Statistics show that while the number of people identifying themselves as KMT supporters began to decline since 2011, they did not transfer their support to the DPP but rather became moderate voters.

Voters are more sympathetic to the DPP in this year’s elections because they are disappointed with the lackluster performance of the KMT, said Eric Yu, a research fellow of the center.

“The major issue of the DPP is public trust, while the biggest baggage of the KMT is the poor performance of the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou,” Yu said.

Among moderate voters, the 29-year-old DPP, which strongly asserts Taiwanese sovereignty, focuses on young voters, of whom nearly 1.3 million voted for the first time.

The century-old KMT, which promotes friendlier ties with China, looks to its support base and China-based Taiwanese businesspeople and their families estimated to number around 1 million.

The PFP, a splinter party of the KMT, criticizes the KMT and DPP for leading the island to the verge of collapse over the past 16 years and urges voters to transcend political boundaries.

Apart from choosing a new president, voters also elected members of the parliament, or Legislative Yuan. It is the second time for the presidential and legislative elections to be held concurrently since the self-ruled island’s citizens began freely electing their government in 1996.

Taiwan’s single-house legislature comprises 73 district representatives, 34 proportionally elected at-large representatives, and six aboriginal representatives.

With the KMT struggling with low approval ratings, the DPP stands a good chance of winning a majority of seats in the island’s legislature for the first time since 1992, when the first direct legislative elections were held.

For this to happen, the DPP needs to make inroads into traditional areas of KMT support in central, northern Taiwan and outlying islands.

In the 2001 legislative elections, the DPP became the largest party for the first time, but it did not have total control of the legislature because the DPP and its smaller allies held fewer seats than the KMT-led coalition.

The DPP also lacked effective control of the legislature following the chamber’s 2004 elections as a KMT-led opposition alliance outnumbered them, resulting in another four years of government gridlock.

In Beijing, a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council said Saturday that the mainland would not intervene in Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections but rather remain focused on cross-strait relations.

Taiwan and China have been governed separately since they split amid a civil war in 1949. Beijing has since then endeavored to isolate Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

==Kyodo

Category: Daily Witness, National