The Four Losses for Pasuya Yao’s Election Campaign: Focus, Adjustment, Policy, and Vigor

 The Four Losses for Pasuya Yao’s Election Campaign: Focus, Adjustment, Policy, and Vigor

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

June 30, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

From any angle of strategy or tactics, the election campaign since the DPP nominated Pasuya Yao for the Taipei City mayoral election has been extremely weird, which most people find inexplicable, or even ridiculous. The DPP, a party branded as well-versed in election campaigns, under the superiority of complete control of the government, surprisingly fielded such a candidate as Pasuya Yao in the battle for the capital city, which it has been thinking all the time to win. In the five months from now to election day, what will the DPP exhibit in terms of deployment and planning to fight for this election whose prospects have not been viewed favorably? This is something definitely worth observing and exploring.

Quite a few DPP bigwigs, including Lin Cho-shui, point out that this strategy is very queer, and that at the current stage, it is Ting Shou-chung who leads in the polls in Taipei City rather than Ko Wen-je, that PasuyaYao does not fight against Ting but fiercely attacks Ko, not engaging in a Blue-Green duel, but a White-Green duel, causing the mutual exhaustion of the White and Green, and letting the Blue continue to lead. This way, how could Pasuya Yao win the election?

More dumbfounding is that even the pro-Green scholar Chen Fang-ming has also criticized that in order to court the support of the Deep Green camp, Yao surprisingly said that “‘Green’ is precisely the Taiwan value," simply leaving the citizens of Taipei dumbfounded. For Taiwan’s society, which has long been democratic and pluralistic, and has experienced turning over of political parties, such sophistry shows both bigotry and cunning, and fundamentally looks down on the wisdom and judgment of the voters. Especially, at a time when the tectonic plates of both the Blue and Green parties are in the process of disintegration and shifting, the proportion of swing voters and third forces, including globalized and economic-oriented voters in Taipei, is even more pronounced. Yao, on the other hand, has adopted ideology and forsaken substantive city governance; for expanding his support base, this could do more harm than good, making himself smaller and smaller as the campaign progresses.

Another point that Yao has seriously been questioned about is whether his campaign planks are feasible. From "free monthly passes for public transportation," "constructing public housing for NT$480,000 (approximately US$16,000)" to "the state will help you to raise a second baby," all these have been branded on the Internet as planks of "injecting lots of money and being ridiculous," which involve calculations of huge financial figures, but when Pasuya Yao faces questioning from various circles, he cannot come up with a clear-cut formula or planning for source of funding or legal basis.

Why does Yao engage in the election campaign in Taipei City in such a manner? There are two possibilities: One is that he is rash in attaining accomplishments, forgetting the Confucius teaching “whatever is excessive is worse than falling short,” in the end, hurting Tsai Ing-wen and scaring away swing as well as light Blue and light Green voters who hope to maintain the status quo. The second is that he in fact is, and is willing to be, the one designated by the DPP to divide and drag down Ko Wen-je’s path to re-election, a “carpetbagger” cutting off Ko Wen-je’s ambition for a higher post in the future. Whichever is the reason, it highlights the contradictions and predicaments of the DPP while in full control of the government.

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