On October 3rd, with a nervous mood, I came to Taipei and began my first work in Taiwan. Looking back at my initial experience in Taiwan, the county and city elections on the island have undoubtedly drawn a heavy stroke on this "white paper", whether it is a guest or colleague, the first time I am stationed in Taiwan, I have encountered great changes in the political ecology of the island, both when the election is in progress, and there is a blue-green territory that changes the sky, and even catch up with the "Korean Wave" caused by Han Hanyu to sweep the whole of Taiwan.
When it comes to county and city elections on the island, the highlight is naturally the voting day on November 24. Due to the "nine-in-one" election in the form of a "referendum tied to the general election," coupled with the incomplete preparation of Taiwan's election organs, the unfavorable administration of the DPP authorities has led to a change in the people's minds, and the weather has increased the people's willingness to vote, which has led to a series of factors, which have greatly extended the time for casting votes in various localities. My local colleagues in Taipei around me have been queuing for at least an hour to vote, and some of them have queued for more than two hours at polling stations.
According to the usual practice, all polling stations should be voted after the end of voting, but when the voting deadline came, the number of people queuing did not decrease at all, and finally the election authority actually made the decision to vote at the same time. Because most of the polling places have several polling stations at the same time, there are many places where people wait in line to vote while listening to the votes next door. Even the island's media have reported that some polling stations have allowed mobile phones to enter. All the above-mentioned chaos has brought great variables to this election, especially in Taipei.
That night, I was tasked with rushing to the press conference of Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-che, who was seeking re-election. The press conference was originally scheduled to start at 7:30, which means that Ko Wenzhe, who once beat his opponent with a high vote, has a twelve-point certainty of his victory. But after the vote was issued at 4:30, the difference in the number of votes between Ko Wenzhe and the KMT candidate Ding Shouzhong was only a hundred or even dozens of votes, and my colleagues and I knew that the election situation in Taipei City would never be so easy and simple.
Ko Wenzhe, who was born as a physician and flaunted "white power" and "beyond blue and green", was elected with a high vote of 850,000 in 2014, and originally carried the expectations of many people who were tired of blue-green vicious fighting, but in the past 4 years, Ke Wenzhe's words and deeds of flashing his words, avoiding the important and light, the capricious attitude and the unfulfilled municipal government have been criticized by the people, and the cancellation of the elderly gold and the "five major fraud cases" have made the protests more like shadows. Although Ko Wen-che's strength is to be able to cross blue and green at the same time, this is also his weakness, and his campaign director general, writer Li Yuan, whose pen name is "Ono", recorded a video in which the DPP's Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Chen Qimai, his wife Chen Peiqi and the DPP's Taichung mayoral candidate Lin Jialong's wife, Yu Huabo, were interpreted by the outside world as waving to pan-green voters. However, the doubts of the middle supporters, the return of the blue-green supporters, and the rise of Kaohsiung Han Hanyu to steal the news page all made Ke Wenzhe's popularity decline in the final sprint stage. Less than a week before the election, Ke Wenzhe shouted urgently, "Blue and green each pull 5%, I fell!" Please, everyone must come out and vote for Ke Wenzhe! This was shouted until the "night before the election", and then looking at Ke Wenzhe and the originally unpromising Ding Shouzhong vote tug-of-war, Ke Wenzhe was no longer as smooth as in the past.
I just didn't expect that this protracted battle for Taipei's election was unprecedentedly long. At about seven o'clock, the staff said that the voting was not over, the press conference had to be postponed to 8:30, and at 7:50, they said that the voting had just ended at 7:49 and then postponed to 9:30. It was postponed again and again, and the gap between Koding and Koding could not be opened, and the atmosphere at the press conference was quite awkward.
At about eleven o'clock, my colleagues and I took advantage of the gap and transferred to the parking lot of Sisi South Village not far away, which was the scene of Ke Wenzhe's ticketing night event. The supporters have been waiting here for a long time, and the scene is shoulder to shoulder, but the lack of the host's field and the unclear election have caused the place to be dead. In an eerie silence, everyone stared at the number of votes on the big screen of the scene, no one spoke, no one left, only an artist who had been singing for several hours set off the tiredness and uneasiness in the eyes of young people with a cheerful singing voice.
Finally, at two o'clock in the morning, the ticket was over, and Ke Wenzhe narrowly defeated Ding Shouzhong with only 3254 votes. At the moment of announcing the victory, There was no joy on Ke Wenzhe's face. The former 850,000 votes were only 580,000 votes, and the people have given Ke Wenzhe a hard slap with their votes. However, Ding Shouzhong was not satisfied, and overnight he proposed that the election was invalid, believing that the chaos of the election and the network army of the Ke camp took the opportunity to operate, so that Ke Wenzhe was lucky to win.
Although Ding Shouzhong has now applied for a re-examination of votes, Ke Wenzhe has more than three hundred votes, although some media on the island have begun to predict whether Ke Wenzhe will be the strongest candidate to compete for 2020, there is no doubt that the 2018 Taipei mayoral election is doomed to have a satisfactory ending that makes people convinced and have nothing to say.