The Tainan city council continues to be plagued by issues of entrenched corruption. This can be seen in a recent series of raids conducted by police on the offices of former Tainan city council speaker Kuo Hsin-liang...
The Tainan city council speaker, Chiu Lili, and deputy city council speaker Lin Zhi-chan, were detained earlier this month by police under suspicion of corruption. Both are DPP politicians. Chiu was eventually released on 1.5 million NT bail, while Lin was released on 1.2 million NT bail, with Chiu asserting afterward that she respected the judiciary’s actions and apologizing for making supporters worry...
The Tainan mayoral policy presentation was held on November 16th. This piece will focus on the two primary contenders, Hsieh Lung-chieh of the KMT, and incumbent Huang Wei-che of the DPP. The policy presentation took place in the form of each candidate being given twenty minutes to make a presentation. The presentation took place almost entirely in Taiwanese Hokkien, though Huang broke into Mandarin at some points...
It seems highly likely that KMT city mayors will pursue a strategy of carrying out city-level exchanges with China going forward, a model originally pioneered by Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je that Kaohsiung mayor-elect Han Kuo-yu has also taken up. However, some DPP mayors may also be tempted to do the same, as observed in the example of Tainan mayor-elect Huang Wei-che expressing public interest in visiting China much like Ko or Han...
Once again, it seems that an unusual, outsider political candidate is shaking up mayoral elections in Taiwan. Tainan mayoral candidate Mark Lin’s meteoric rise from obscurity to fame proves revealing about some of the dynamics of Taiwanese politics at present...
