Taiwan in the balance on big day at the polls
Blue gives way to green as two months on the campaign trail finally leads to the ballot box
Taiwanese went to the polls yesterday for what were billed as the island's nine-in-one elections, the outcomes of which are seen as crucial to the 2016 presidential poll.
Balloting started at 8am with voters queuing peacefully outside 16,000 polling stations across the island to elect 11,130 holders of nine types of public offices.
President Ma Ying-jeou, accompanied by Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin, went to vote in the morning, drawing a huge crowd of media and supporters. Asked if he was confident about the chances of his Kuomintang (KMT) party in the local polls, Ma offered only a smile before hurrying away.
In the central city of Changhua, Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), appeared upbeat when she accompanied a DPP candidate to a polling station.
"I hope all DPP candidates will do well in the elections," she said.
Both Ma and Tsai have spent a lot of time on the hustings for their candidates in the past two months, hoping to retain or increase their control of 22 cities and counties.
Before yesterday's poll, the KMT held 15 cities and counties, including the four big municipalities of Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan in northern Taiwan and Taichung on the central part of the island.
By last night, the party had lost three of those municipalities, including Taipei, only holding on in New Taipei City.
Hit hard by a series of food scandals and amid growing public disappointment with the Ma government, the ruling party always faced a tough challenge from the DPP.
The DPP, which controls the southern municipalities of Kaohsiung and Tainan, set its sights on winning Taichung, which it did. Analysts said that win could allow the pro-independence party to expand its influence from central Taiwan to the island's north, boosting its chances in 2016.
Tsai focused her campaign efforts on Taichung and nearby Changhua and Nantou counties, asking voters to "turn around central Taiwan" to "punish the Ma government for its poor performance".
The DPP's candidate for Taichung, Lin Chia-lung, 50, had urged his KMT opponent, Jason Hu Chih-chiang, 66, who was running for a fourth term, to hand over power to a younger generation, a campaign message that seemed to hit a chord in the city.
"The old mayor has been there for too long and it is difficult for him to bring about changes to the city," 21-year-old university student Dawoo Huang, a first-time voter, said of Hu.
"I hope a new mayor will improve infrastructure, transport and resource allocation in Taichung."
But housewife Sheu Li-chuan, 54, said Hu had done a lot to improve the municipality. "The incumbent mayor has done a good job developing infrastructure and built the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House," Sheu said.
In Taipei, another closely watched constituency with two political novices fighting for the mayoral post, Sean Lien Sheng-wen, son of KMT honorary chairman Lien Chan, had appealed to voters to turn out.
"It is a sunny day - a good day for voters to go to vote," he said after casting his ballot.
Lien had been fighting a rearguard action against surgeon Dr Ko Wen-je, who promised to overcome the persistent green-blue DPP-KMT political divide and share power with the public. That approach was so successful that he had held a comfortable double-digit lead in opinion polls from the start of campaigning in September. And those opinion polls proved correct with Lien conceding defeat before official results were even announced.
