Taipei metro is always crowded at rush hours, especially Friday evening. But yesterday was out of control. There were so many people in the station that It took me 10 minutes just to get on the platform. I couldn’t board the first two trains because they were just too crowded. After I finally fought my way to Taipei Grand Central Station, things there weren’t any better either. Every train of Taiwan High Speed Rail leaving Taipei was packed, and many people were forced to stand in the aisle for an hour. It seemed like everybody in Taipei was in a mad rush to get out. Not just people in Taipei. The whole island of Taiwan was on the move. There were 154 direct cross-strait flights from China to Taiwan, a record high. Railroad system and buses were overloaded. More than 200,000 Taiwanese traveled back home to their cities, towns and villages just to vote.
On the High Speed Rail Road: Taiwanese people rushed to go home to vote
Yes, just to vote.
The idea of enduring hours of pain and hassle just to vote would seem foreign and absurd to many Americans. But in Taiwan, election has always been a big deal, especially in a hotly-contested election like this one. Although I also have American citizenship, I actually have never voted in the states during my 12 years of living there. So I myself was very excited about getting to vote for the first time knowing that my vote would count at a close election.
But didn’t turn out that way.
Despite large turnout of 73% of voting rate, to my and many people’s surprises, President Ma easily defeated Tsai Ing-wen with a large margin of almost 800,000 votes. Although I am not a big fan of politics, I’d offer my 2 cents on this.
1. Ma didn’t defeat Tsai, but Tsai’s own China policy and Taiwanese entrepreneurs did. Armed with a S.J.D from Harvard Law School, handsome features and sparkling clean image, Ma always has widespread popular support. However, in the past 4 years, despite enjoying a supermajority in Legislative Yuan, his own mild manner and indecisiveness failed to push through any major reforms in Taiwan. He did make significant progress with stabilizing Taiwan’s relationship with China and won the hearts of Beijing administration and most of Taiwanese entrepreneurs alike. On the hand, Tsai ‘s anti-China policy and ambiguous stance has rendered her vulnerable to opponent’s charges that cross-strait relationship with China would suffer greatly if she was elected. With Taiwan export-oriented economy struggling, people were very concerned that Tsai’s election prospect would deal a double whammy to the economy.
Ma Ying-jeou, unfortunately, his look is better than his decision making ability
2. Although I did vote for Ma, I am not excited about the prospect of any major reforms, and frankly, I have been disappointed by Ma’s track record. Even I still hope that he would continue to push new measures on various issues, especially tax on property transaction, I am not sure if he and KMT have the backbone to get it done.
Tsai Ing-wen, the chairwoman of DPP
3. Chen Chih-Chung, the son of former president Chen Shui-bian, suffered a humiliating defeat for his bid for Legislative Yuan. Despite charges of money laundry, frauds and buying prostitutes (rumor has it, his favorite prostitute is “Nicole”), Chen managed to secure a landslide victory in Kaohsiung city congress last year. Fortunately, Kaohsiung citizens eventually realized that they didn’t want to send a guy like this to national legislative branch.
Mr. Chen Chih-Chung pondering if he should call Nicole again
All right, that’s all for my political 2 cents. I hate politics, especially Taiwanese politics. Taiwanese people have long desired a strong and effective leader, however, their own short-sighted decision making ability have deprived themselves of a leader like this. Well, that’s another story for next post.
