The death of Mr. Democracy of Taiwan, and the by-election of Kaohsiung mayor
July/August, 2020 in Taiwan
First, I must say that I felt really guilty about not writing here for almost 2 months. Recently there are some personnel issues at our department, and as the chief resident doctor, these issues did negatively affect my mood — even though I don’t want to admit it.
Anyway, there are some big news going on recently in Taiwan which I’d like to make some small notes about:
Former president Mr. Lee Teng-hui passed away.
President Lee is an icon of democracy in Taiwan.
After KMT (R.O.C.) retreated to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek’s son Chiang Ching-kuo eventually accepted that R.O.C had to embrace Taiwan and to stop thinking only about ‘counterattacking the mainland (反攻大陸).’ Chiang Ching-Kuo decided to train a local Taiwanese scholar to take over his role — he chose Lee Teng-hui as his successor.
Mr. Lee was an expert in agricultural economics. Aside from his contribution to Taiwan’s democracy, after his retirement — in his 90s — he kept studying breeding Taiwanese prime beef cattle and did research on their genetics. He was a person who deserves true respect.
Mr. Lee passed away on July 30th at the age of 98. His body was cremated on August 14th.
DPP’s Chen Chi-mai won the Kaohsiung by-election yesterday.
This was the third — and the last (lol) — election held in Kaohsiung this year. Though I knew Chen would easily win the election, I still turned on the TV at 4 p.m. This time was not as exciting as the recall vote held 2 months ago, but still I looked forward to the result of this ‘final election.’
An interesting thing to note is that candidate Wu representing the third party, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), lost the election and could not take back their election deposit. To retrieve the 2,000,000 NTD (about 68,000 USD) election deposit, the candidate has to win at least 10% of the votes.
Many see this as an indicator of TPP’s poor prognosis in its future elections. Founded by Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je, this new party sought to replace KMT, or at least to become the third largest party in Taiwan.
Mayor Ko is a controversial politician and is often described as an opportunist. Mr. Ko and the party he led are often criticized for their ambiguous cross-strait discourse and political ideology.
I should find some time to write about Mr. Ko. I once had much expectations on him, but now it has almost turned into plain disappointment.
