blaHCL Presents

2008 presidential election in Taiwan is now over, and KMT candidate Ma is now the new President of Taiwan. I’m very pleased with the election results - not just because Mr. Ma won out, but also how Hsieh handled DPP’s defeat. It was very honorable of him to come out and tell his supporters that it is a personal defeat, and that everyone should respect the outcome of this democratic process. I was afraid we would go through another protest like we did in 2004, which was an extremely immature reaction from the KMT (namely Mr. Song, who declare the election result “void” when he learned that he lost buy a small margin).

In about half a year, we too will have our presidential election here in the States. It is interesting how similar Taiwanese and American politics mimic each other over the past 8 years. Both countries elected a president back in 2000 from a much relatively “conservative” party (ironic how the Taiwanese president hailed from a party with “Progressive” in its name); both countries re-elected the president despite a large outcry from the voters; both presidents have faced increasingly challenging international affairs, losing a few allies along the way, over the past 8 years, thanks a few major political decisions their president has made; education went south real quick; people are more divided than ever under their respective leaders with no apparent foresights; both presidents love to leverage the “emotional ties” of certain events to manipulate their people (incidentally, both events deal with “numbers,” one being 911, the other being 228); and both countries have seen their economy crumbling down from its former prosperity. I also find it interesting that there are quite a few similarities between KMT candidate Ma and the Democratic candidate Obama - both in their personality, their mannerism, and their educational background (ok… that’s a stretch, they both graduated from Harvard Law, and that’s about it).

2008 presidential election in Taiwan ended in a landslide, where Ma took a whooping 17% lead, or 2.2 million out of 13 million valid votes. If recent events in the US economy was any indication, I think (or hope) the US election would have a similar outcome. I just hope the fight for nomination between Clinton and Obama will end so that they can move on to the “real battle” sooner. Here’s to hoping that both the US and Taiwan can finally see some changes after all these years of, for lack of a more polite word, incompetence.