Voters hand Kuomintang devastating message

As initial results streamed into the party’s vote counting stations, the question was not of losing to the now Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, but of the staggering extent of the party’s losses at both the national and local levels. 

 

At 7pm, Chu along with his running mate Wang Ju-hsuan, conceded defeat in front of supporters amid anger, disappointment, applause and heckles. After congratulating Tsai and bowing in apology, an emotional Chu announced that he would step down immediately as KMT chairman to take responsibility for the party’s worst national electoral defeat in decades. 

 

“This means that Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP have been entrusted by the Taiwanese people after this victory to lead the ROC, and Taiwan toward a more fortuitous and better future,” Chu said. He admitted that the party had a long and arduous process ahead of it in order for it to truly learn from past mistakes and re-earn the people’s trust.　Along with losing executive power, the party lost more than half of its 64 seats in the Legislative Yuan (while taking less than a third of the party vote overall), with the certain end of Wang Jing-pyng’s 17-year stint as the chamber’s speaker. 

 

Party spokesperson Yang Wei-chung tendered his resignation earlier in the afternoon. Vice Chairman and former Taipei City Mayor (who also lost yesterday in Keelung) resigned as well.

 

Party’s misfortunes show no endThe margin of the KMT’s defeat and its subsequent consequences may see dramatic changes to its leadership in the coming days beyond the resignation of Chu. 

 

Defeating the DPP in the presidential contest in 2012 by close to 800,000 votes, the victor at the time, President Ma Ying-jeou declared that his cross-strait policies had been vindicated by voters.

 

Voters’ first doubts over those policies came in 2014 following the Sunflower Movement, with the party hanging onto one municipal seat.

 

Yesterday represented a no-confidence vote at the national level, which will not only send the KMT back into the opposition, but may entail a reconfiguration of cross-strait relations even though the DPP has promised throughout its campaign that it would strive to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

 

An unclear road lies aheadThe KMT is a party not unfamiliar with defeat. But how quickly and boldly the party can institute reforms to win over its disenchanted supporters, let alone the population as a whole remains to be seen. 

 

Now, the post-election direction of the party will likely see a resurfacing of its fractiousness, which manifested itself in the ousting of its original presidential nominee, former Deputy Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu in the final months of the campaign. 

 

Soong bowing out for good?

 

Meanwhile, People First Party (PFP) Chairman and three-time also-ran James Soong remained just as distant from winning the Presidential Office, although he finished with more than a million votes more than his run in 2012.