Did Earthquake Lead to Chen Victory in 2000

ver at DailyKos a poster in the comments section of a post asking for examples of natural disasters bringing down gov'ts posted this:

this 7.6 one hit the inland taiwanese county of nantou in 1999 when i was teaching english in the closest major city of taichung. the federal government, controlled by the guomindang party, utterly botched the relief effort, sending aid only to those local governments that were controlled by the guomindang or aligned independents, while witholding aid or dragging their feet with working with the county and city governments controlled by the opposition DPP party.

vice president and presidential candidate lian zhan used relief money to do a series of thinly-disguised campaign photo ops in taichung county, in a very similar manner to what bush just did in NOLA and MS. when refugees from the disaster area came up to the caital city of taipei a month later to protest the lack of adequate relief from the ferderal government a whole month after the initial earthquake, they were denied a permite to march on 10/10, the country's equivalent of july fourth, and were ultimately caged into a protest zone and hit with fire hoses when they refused to disperse.

the result was intense upset in the central part of taiwan, and the victory of opposition candidate chen shuibian in the presidential election in march of 2000 over both the guomindang vice president lian zhan and former guomindang maverick candidate james soong.

Problem is that Nantou went heavily for the KMT in 2000: 65%. But what about the thesis generally?

[Taiwan]