Election shows approval of Tsai's 8 years in office: DPP official
ROC Central News Agency
01/14/2024 05:04 PM
Taipei, Jan. 14 (CNA) The results of Saturday's presidential and legislative elections showed voters approved of President Tsai Ing-wen's (蔡英文) stewardship of Taiwan over the past eight years, according to a senior Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) official.
DPP nominee Lai Ching-te (賴清德) secured a historic third consecutive presidential term for the party, albeit with a significantly reduced share of the vote compared to Tsai's victories in 2020 and 2016.
Despite Lai's victory, the ruling party was unable to retain its majority in the 113-seat Legislative Yuan. It won 51 seats in the just-concluded legislative election while the main opposition Kuomintang got 52 seats.
The DPP official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, told CNA that he believed the outcome showed Taiwanese people approved of Tsai's record in office.
Citing an unnamed media poll, the official said that Tsai held a 43.5 percent approval rating at the end of 2023, the highest for a departing president in nearly 20 years.
He added that Saturday's election results also indicated the public backed Tsai's efforts to strengthen national defense and her policies to establish closer ties with democratic countries around the world and increase Taiwan's international visibility.
In addition, the presidential election marked a rejection by voters of Kuomintang (KMT) nominee Hou Yu-ih's (侯友宜) cross-strait policy and the "1992 consensus" advocated by the opposition party, the DPP official said.
The "1992 consensus," which is rejected by the DPP, refers to a tacit understanding reached between the then-KMT government and Beijing in 1992.
It has been consistently interpreted by the KMT as an acknowledgment by both sides that there is only "one China," with each side free to interpret what "China" means. Beijing, however, has never publicly recognized the second part of the KMT's interpretation.
Tung Li-wen (董立文), CEO of the Taipei-based Foundation on Asia-Pacific Peace Studies and the former head of the DPP's China Affairs Department, echoed this view, saying he believed Saturday's election indicated that the "1992 consensus" was "on its last legs, if not dead already."
Speaking at a post-election seminar organized by the Taipei-based Institute for National Policy Research (INPR) Sunday, Tung said the KMT and Hou had repeatedly argued that the presidential election was "a choice between war and peace."
Tung said that while the opposition party had gone so far as to frame a DPP win as a threat to the sovereignty of the Republic of China (Taiwan), "such rhetoric has never gained favor with the public but instead made the KMT a target during the campaign."
However, Tung said that he thought the three major political parties in Taiwan --the DPP, the KMT and the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) -- shared similar principles concerning cross-strait policy.
According to Tung, these principles are safeguarding the ROC's sovereignty, upholding the Constitution and the nation's democratic system, and conducting dignified exchanges with Beijing on an equal footing.
Speaking during the same seminar, Stanley Kao (高碩泰), Taiwan's former top representative to the United States, said he believed the incoming administration should have "a frank exchange of views" with Washington so that there are "no surprises" before Lai takes office on May 20.
Kao added that he believed the U.S.' official delegation to Lai's inauguration would be closely monitored by Taipei, including how high level it will be.
Lai has repeatedly pitched Taiwan as a responsible stakeholder in the hope that China, Washington and the international community would no longer question whether he still harbored his expressed previous beliefs on Taiwan's independence, Kao said.
Although Lai had described himself as a "pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence" as recently as 2017, he has sought to distance himself from this rhetoric since becoming vice president in 2020, instead arguing that "Taiwan is already an independent sovereign country."
The nuance of Lai's current distinction appears lost on Beijing, which denounced the DPP candidate as a "dangerous separatist" in the run-up to the Jan. 13 election.
Taiwanese voters on Saturday kept the DPP in power for another four years. It was the first time any political party won three consecutive four-year terms in office since Taiwan first held direct elections in 1996.
(By Joseph Yeh, Wen Kuei-hsiang and Yeh Su-ping)
Enditem/ASG
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