Re: Eleições de Taiwan
Enviado: 18/1/2024 1:41
Independence on the ballot?
The presidential election in Taiwan has come down to a three-way race. The front-runner is current Vice President William Lai, who is the candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party. The DPP views Taiwan as a sovereign country and does not seek reunification with China.
Lai’s challengers are New Taipei City mayor Hou Yu-ih, of the Kuomintang (KMT), and Ko Wen-je, a former mayor of Taipei running for the center-left Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The KMT embraces the idea of future reunification with China under a democratic government. The TPP criticizes both DPP and KMT platforms on cross-strait relations as too extreme and seeks a middle ground that maintains the status quo: A Taiwan that is de facto sovereign, but with strong economic and cultural ties with China.
Taiwan law mandates that no polls are published in the 10 days before the election. As of Jan. 3, when the final polls were published, averages had Lai leading with 36%, with Hou at 31% and Ko at 24%.
Lai has consistently led in the polls, prompting the KMT and TPP to earlier consider running on a joint ticket. But the two parties failed to agree on terms, and the coalition attempt imploded.
This may prove crucial, as joining forces may have represented the best chance of a KMT candidate being elected – an outcome that may have cooled tensions with Beijing.
Taiwanese democracy
The island of Taiwan has been governed as the “Republic of China” since 1949, when the KMT lost a civil war to the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP set up the People’s Republic of China on the mainland, and the KMT retreated to Taiwan.
For decades, both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China diverged on every possible policy except one: Both governments agreed that there was only one China, and that Taiwan was a part of China. They each sought to unite Taiwan and the mainland – but under their own rule.
Although that remains the goal in Beijing today, for Taiwan the outlook has started to change.
The change began with Taiwanese democratization – a process that began in the early 1990s after decades of autocratic rule. After gradually rolling out direct elections for the legislature, governors and mayors, the island held its first democratic election for president in 1996. Despite Beijing holding military exercises in the Taiwan Strait in an attempt to interfere with the vote, the KMT-affiliated incumbent won against a DPP candidate with strong ties to the Taiwan independence movement.
Four years later, the DPP’s candidate won and started the first of two consecutive terms. In 2008, a KMT candidate returned to power. But since 2016, Taiwan has been led by Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP.
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Pro-independence sentiment
Though speculation about the geopolitical fallout and China’s reaction to the election has dominated coverage of the vote around the world, for Taiwan voters, independence is one of several critical issues the island faces. The economy frequently rises even above cross-strait issues in importance, with many voters expressing concern over the rapid rise of housing prices, stagnating salaries, slow economic growth and how the incumbent party handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the issue of independence itself, Taiwanese polls have shown a creep toward pro-independence sentiment. As of September 2023, nearly half of Taiwanese voters said they preferred independence (48.9%) for the island, while 26.9% sought a continuation of the status quo. A shrinking minority – now just 11.8% – said they hoped for future reunification.
A percentagem é pequena, mas 10% é significativo. No caso de guerra estariam dispostos a suportar as operações chinesas? 10% de 20M são 2M, existe muito potencial para pelo menos incomodar operações internas de defesa.
Taiwanese election may determine whether Beijing opts to force the issue of reunification