It met forecasts. The president of Taiwan, the progressive Tsai Ing-Wen, the repeated mandate for another four years to be imposed with firmness in the presidential elections this Saturday on his nearest rival, the conservative populist Have Kuo-Yu, of the Kuomintang, which has surpassed by about two million votes.
With more than 90% screened, Tsai managed to 7.8 million votes -half a million more than four years ago-, 57.3%, compared to 5.2 (38,3%) of its competitor and mayor of Kaohsiung, the second city in taiwan. The count proceeded more slowly in the votes for the legislative elections, which will determine if the Democratic Progressive Party of the president repeats the absolute majority in the unicameral Parliament of 113 seats) that won for the first time in history in the elections of 2016.
The triumph of Tsai represents a 180-degree turn in the fortune election of the president and his party, than it was just 14 months, received its worst result in years in municipal elections in November 2018, interpreted as a foretaste of the presidential elections. The voters, in an election that both contending parties had been presented as decisive for the future of the island. Finally, it has been imposed with clarity the proposal of Tsai, driven in part by the protests against China and in favor of the democracy of the past seven months in Hong Kong. In a stroke of enormous symbolism has been imposed, even in Kaohsiung, the city of Have and a manor traditional to the DPP that had been given back to the president in 2018.
Tsai had been drawn to throughout the campaign as the great defender of the rights and freedoms in Taiwan versus a China thriving and authoritarian repressed with hardness the desire for democracy in the former british colony, and would do the same on the island. From the troops Kuomintang nationalists could take refuge there there after their defeat in the chinese civil war in 1949, Beijing considers Taiwan an inalienable part of its territory and not renunciation of force to achieve unification.
instead, they Have accused Tsai hurt the economy in the taiwanese with their departure from China, the largest economic partner of the island, and advocated for a recovery of the bonds that they lived their best time during the tenure of the last chairman of the Kuomintang, Ma Ying-jeou (2008-2016).
it Is an argument with which, at the beginning of this year, Have had managed to pull up about twenty points in the polls to the president and is rooted in a sector of the public: “The Communist Party of China says that the people’s Republic is the real China. The Kuomintang said that the Republic of China (official name of Taiwan) is true. Are never going to agree. But speak about. And while they talk, not fight. We are confident and the two parties can do business. With Tsai, companies that rely on their chinese customers are sinking,” said Tsui Chunhao, an employee of transport for 63 years.
But that trend reversed this summer, when a series of errors of personal of the conservative mayor was joined by the outbreak of the protests in Hong Kong. “Tsai is the one who best can protect us. The Kuomintang wants to get too close to China and that we are too equal to mainland China. But we are not chinese, we are taiwanese”, said Jean Shaw, an enthusiastic supporter of the president in the fifties, before they go to the polls on a day of clear skies and high participation.
in Addition to its strong message in defense of the identity of the taiwanese, Tsai has benefited from the good performance of the economy, which in the third quarter of 2019 grew by 2.9%, more than the other “dragons” traditional asian (South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore), and a progressive programme that has turned the island in the first place in asia to approve same-sex marriage.
On the outside of the headquarters of the DPP, as we progressed to the afternoon and confirmed the clear victory of the president, the atmosphere became increasingly festive. Thousands of people with green flags, the color of the party, came together to celebrate the victory, chanting slogans like, “oh, Taiwan is going to win!”.
Although it was safe it for months in the polls, the new mandate of Tsai will not be well received in the headquarters official in Beijing, where the chinese Government has never hidden its antipathy toward the president “chinoescéptica”.
“China will respond to your re-election with more of the same [which it has done until now]: snatch Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, reduce tourism and to develop military maneuvers in the Taiwan straits,” notes the consulting firm Eurasia in a note distributed this week.
Although its analysts rule out a reaction more drastic than China, yes they point out that “Taiwan remains the cunning more sensitive to the chinese president, Xi Jinping. In an atmosphere highly charged politically -with Beijing on the defensive about Hong Kong and the ‘interference’ of the united STATES in the internal affairs chinese – it opens the possibility that Tsai and Washington committed a calculation error if you cross one of the red lines are not officers of China on diplomatic contacts or military high-level”.
