Sunday, July 17, 2005

Ma Wins in a "Gallup"

The Taipei Times' bizarre headline notwithstanding, Mayor Ma Ying-jyeou of Taipei thumped Wang Jin-pyng to take the KMT chairmanship and become its de facto Presidential candidate in 2008 (China Post story). Ma won with more than 70% of the votes. David at Jujuflop has already blogged on this in his useful perspicacious way, so I won't repeat his analysis. Go read it.

The size of the victory was immense, and the implications and motivations of that will take some time to tease out. Was this a vote for reform? Was it the mainlanders not wanting a Taiwanese to head up the KMT? It will be exciting to see the fallout from this one.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was it the mainlanders not wanting a Taiwanese to head up the KMT?

I agree that the implications of this election, the results of which few people foresaw, have yet to be seen. But the above statement is fairly off. First, Ma won by an overwhelming margin all over Taiwan. Clearly, people of all ethnic persuasions preferred Ma. Secondly, if anything, the senior mainland KMT-insiders like Lian and Song preferred Wang, who would be sure to not rock the boat in terms of KMT finances, reform, etc.

Yeah, the big question is how the KMT apparatus is going to take to Ma considering he has such overwhelming support and such little support within the party hierarchy. Is Ma going to totally clean house? Or will the KMT in its last death throes somehow find a way to complete marginalize Ma and we're looking at Lian/Song '08?

Michael Turton said...

Well, the location of voters is less relevant than you might think. There are mainlanders all over the island. But I agree that Ma's victory was so overwhelming that it indicates widespread support from all sections.

I agree with your big question. Can Ma clean house when cleaning house means changing the way the KMT does business? Lien-Song in 08? All things are possible!

Michael