So hi everyone.
My name is Chun-yi Lee,
I am the director of Taiwan Studies Programme at
School of Politics and International Relations,
University of Nottingham.
As most of you are aware of, Taiwan has experienced
the latest presidential election on
January the eleventh, a beautiful Saturday.
And Taiwan has once again proved that democracy,
in a society in a country that has
won of most of the people's worry of
the previous public figure,
that Han Kuo-yu was defeated dramatically
in front of the current president Tsai Ing-wen. DPP president,
DPP party's presidential candidate Dr Tsai Ing-wen
has won vigorously over Han Kuo-yu,
the Kaohsiung mayor currently.
So what I would like to talk a little bit
today about the election was what my observation before,
during and after the Taiwan presidential election.
Before the presidential election, actually,
there were a lot of voices about two factors.
One was about the public poll.
Han Kuo-yu, KMT's candidate, Kaohsiung Mayor Han,
his supporters were informed by Han's
presidential election office saying that the people
should lie, not to show their indications of supporting of Han.
So before the election,
the public poll's result of
Han and Tsai's supporting rates
was quite dramatically different.
Han was only probably 15 to 20% and Tsai was more than
50% and people were wary about Han's action.
And in fact the result proved
that although Han wasn't losing that much to Tsai,
but it was quite a dramatic difference of
Han's supporters and Tsai's
supporters as Tsai won overwhelming to Han.
So to what extent
that pulling over or asking the supporter not to
answer the public poll would be
useful strategy to Han's team, that is
one query here.
Another query is before the election,
the rally of Han was very,
can we say that... dynamic and many,
many people went. The rally for Tsai,
the day before the election actually
was comparatively much quieter.
The numbers estimate that Tsai's rally was probably much less than
Han's rally and the election results reveal that Tsai,
in fact, won much more than Han. Why was that?
Actually, we would say that it was
mostly because of the Hong Kong protests,
the impact of the Taiwanese young people,
that they would not want Taiwan to have
the similar result as Hong Kong people are facing now.
So the motivation and the fear of
Taiwan's future would be like Hong Kong- motivates
alot of the young people to vote for the DPP
because they don't want Taiwan with the result as of Hong Kong.
So in that sense we would say that this
election, before and during
election, we see the different
speculations of Han and Tsai,
but the results still prove that Tsai,
overwhelmingly won over Han.
Now after the election,
what can we see to proceed of Taiwan in the post election era?
Well, we would say and we would suggest
that disregard of the DPP and KMT's difference,
Taiwan really needs to work together and to pull
over these different opinions within a society
and then work together to face
Taiwan's future in terms of economy and of course,
in terms of the immediate threat from China.
For more of the different views and perspectives, of course,
Taiwan Insight here is our online blog, online magazine.
We started the special issue on
the presidential election of Taiwan 2020 since January,
all the way... since the beginning of January,
all the way until the end of January.
So for readers, audience,
if you are interested in
different views of Taiwan presidential election,
please do come to
our Taiwan Insight blog website and you
will be able to see more of the different perspectives.