The KMT must hold New Taipei and retake Taichung to maintain a high profile, and the Taichung race is already becoming bloody.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/04/11
By: Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文)

In Taiwan’s upcoming local elections in November of this year, the key races to watch are

Credit: Reuters/TPG

the mayoral elections for the “big six” special municipalities. The most powerful executive positions outside the central government (similar in stature to the governors of the biggest U.S. states), the holders of these offices are high profile and top contenders for a potential future presidential run, especially the mayor of the capital, Taipei, which has been the proving ground for three of the four most recent presidents.

For the Kuomintang (KMT), the pressure is intense. In the 2014 local elections, the KMT lost three of four of the “big six” they had dominated for years and barely held New Taipei City, the only one they managed to keep, in a landslide victory for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). A similar blowout awaited the KMT in the 2016 national elections. The party lost the presidency in a landslide and surrendered control of the legislature for the first time. Politically, the KMT is in deep trouble. The KMT no longer has a large stable of popular politicians on the national stage as the old guard has been swept away, and the party desperately needs this election to both prove that they are viable and to elevate locally popular politicians onto the national stage to galvanize a new generation of leaders.    [FULL  STORY]