Taiwan Greens make gains in Five Cities Elections

While unable to win a seat in either the Taipei City or Sinbei City council elections on 27 November 2010, the Green Party did an impressive job in what is seen as a prelude to the upcoming national parliamentary elections to be held in early 2012.

Four of the five candidates fielded by the Green Party obtained sufficient votes in Saturday’s elections to have their NT$200,000 (i.e. 4,943 Euros) bonds returned with an overall average performance in the five districts of 2.3%.

The Greens received a total of just under twenty five thousand votes with 8,321 (7.5%) of those going to the newly elected GYG committee WANG Chung-ming, candidate for Sinbei City councilor in his first time out ( 24,179 votes is the bottom line to win in this district).   Another first timer, 25-year-old LI Yingsyuan, who had joined the Greens as the Project Secretary for the APGN 2010 Congress held in Taipei earlier this year, finished with 4,939 votes (2.24％) in her district（13,863 votes is the bottom line to win in this district）

Whether from the perspective of successful fundraising, increased visibility for Green issues or as a preparation for the upcoming national legislative elections, the candidates and their campaign teams were very upbeat about the elections and look forward to a surge in support for their campaigns and causes.

These elections, for the five major municipalities in Taiwan resulted in what most media characterized as a “vote for the status quo”, i.e., for the two major political parties, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) with the mayor results coming out as predicted (DPP two city mayors, KMT three) and with the number of city councilors for each party being about the same.

The Taiwan Greens will continue to do what needs to be done – monitoring the two parties that have essentially become indistinguishable due to their service to corporate special interests.

11/30/2010 – 03:47