Legislator Performance (poor)

Great article in the Taipei Times today:

Twenty-four legislators from across party lines received a failing grade for their overall performance in an evaluation report made public by a politics watchdog yesterday.

The Taipei Society imposed four benchmarks in evaluating the performance of legislators in the third and fourth sessions of the latest legislative term. They were attendance, conduct, secondary employment and bill propositions.

Seven Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators received a failing grade for their overall performance. They included Wang Shih-cheng (王世堅), Chau Lai-wang (曹來旺) and Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).

The Non-Partisan Solidarity Union (NPSU) also had seven legislators with a failing grade for overall performance. They included Yen Ching-piao (顏清標), Lin Pin-kun (林炳坤) and Lee Ho-shun (李和順).

Yen scored zero for attendance, after he attended only three committee meetings during the third session and none in the fourth.

Other NPSU members who failed to attend any committee meetings during the fourth session were Lee, May Chin (高金素梅) and Yang Chung-tse (楊宗哲).

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had five legislators receiving a failing grade. They included Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆), Chen Hsiu-ching (陳秀卿) and Lee Chuan-chiao (李全教).

Four People First Party (PFP) legislators were also on the list. They were Lin Hui-kuan (林惠官), Feng Ting-kuo (馮定國), Lin Chung-Te (林春德) and Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟).

Huang Cheng-Che (黃政哲) was the only Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) member to receive a failing grade for his overall performance.

KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) topped the improper conduct chart. He was followed by Wang, DPP Legislator Lin Kuo-ching (林國慶), DPP Legislator Lin Chung-mo (林重謨) and Independent Legislator Li Ao (李敖).

In terms of holding a second job, the DPP led the way with 14 legislators holding jobs ranging from hospital owner to director of the board of a communications company. It was trailed by the KMT (11), the PFP (7), NPSU (7) and the TSU (2).

President of the Taipei Society Hawang Shiow-duan (黃秀端) said the publication of the evaluation report was an attempt to sway the legislative primaries of political parties as the year-end legislative election will adopt a new electoral system.

I'd link directly to the report, but it doesn't seem to be on their website yet.

Steady map progress

Update: I've added analysis of Kaohsiung County and Tainan (both city and county) to the map. Now, only parts of Taipei County and Kaohsiung City remain to be done.

Once they're finished, I'll let you know.

Variables in PFP-KMT cooperation; DPP nominations

Just to your refresh your memory:

• The PFP demanded the KMT hand them seven seats for the next legislative election.
• The KMT offered four, then five seats including Kaohsiung City-1, Hualien, and Taipei County-2, -4 and -7. The PFP expressed satisfaction (there was some confusing statements about Taichung City-3).
  
• The PFP nominated people in twelve districts, saying they'd work with the KMT on any remaining conflicts.

So yesterday, the KMT central committee approved only four of those seats. They said they wanted to run another public opinion poll before finalizing Taipei County-2 and for Taichung City-3. The PFP seemed only marginally upset, and made weak calls for sincerity from the KMT and promised to protect PFP comrades. We'll see what happens in the end.

Meanwhile, DPP legislators decided not to run in five districts which had previously been contested by two potential DPP candidates. That means the DPP won't have to run opinion polls in these districts. All to have been a response to rather decisive margins in the party primary phase of the nominations (though in one case the difference was only five percent). Those districts and the remaining candiates are: Taipei County-7 (莊碩漢) and -12 (陳朝龍); Taoyuan County-2 (郭榮宗); Changhua County-3 (林重謨); and Tainan County-1 (葉宜津).

Next step in the primaries

The DPP will be taking their opinion polls between May 11 and June 17. For districted members, the opinion poll will count for 70% of their nomination while the party member vote counted 30%; for at large members, the breakdown is 60% / 40%.

The KMT, almost miraculously, only has one district where two legislators are interested. (No wonder I couldn't find a list of how their legislators registered for nominations! They must have done a lot of backroom dealing first to get to this point so early in the game.) Their opinion poll will be taken between May 16 and May 18.

I'll note some DPP people, including Hsieh himself, have talked about making a legislative majority their goal for '07. I think that's a very dangerous goal they will almost necessarily disappoint themselves. :(

Video from yesterday's brawl

Here's the video (picked up from a comment over at The View from Taiwan)

And the articles:
Taipei Times
Taiwan News
China Post (funniest article)

China Times poll: Ma 33%, Hsieh 24%

With a solid 25% saying they're undecided.

China Times polls are historically strongly biased toward blues (I'm reminded of an editorial they had complaining about the "god-like accuracy"(神準) of Liberty Times polls and implying they had somehow rigged the elections). But it's an interesting poll. I think it shows this is going to be a real close one.

PFP nominees; map update

The PFP nominated 12 people yesterday, including a few that were outside their agreement with the KMT; they promise they will continue to negotiate with the KMT about those though, and some/most of the non-KMT approved nominees will probably end up not running.

I've also updated the Legislative Districts map to include the KMT and PFP nominees (I got my hands on the full list of KMT nominees).

SETTV "fake" news

I'm not particularly interested in this issue as it seems to be a lot of hot air over what was probably an honest mistake, but since it's been a the lead article on UDN, here are some different takes on it:

三立造假／陳雅琳不認錯　反指阮美姝未告知非228畫面
三立造假／阮美姝：有授權簽字　三立應道歉

'Blood Stains Keelung Harbor' used to fabricate 2-28 massacre (China Post)
KMT slams SET-TV over documentary (Tapei Times)
SET TV criticized for attributing incorrect footage to 228 Incident (Taiwan News)

Legislative Districts Map

If you love maps and/or legislative districts, be sure to check out my new Google map on the Districts for the 7th Legislative Yuan 第七屆立法院選舉

So far it is still a work in progress, but here's what I provide:

• English and Chinese district names (Taichung County-4 台中縣 第四選區)
• Names of officially nominated candidates (color coded by party)
• In some districts from the center of the country, the way the vote would have broken down last legislative election if the district had been drawn in the current shape.
• The strict definition of what areas are in the district (villages, cities, or city districts)
• A color coded balloon to indicate which way the district leans (blue, green, or aqua for "too close to to call" (districts which I haven't looked at closely enough yet are aqua balloons with black dots).

So far the shortcomings of the map are:

• I couldn't draw the district shapes. OK, well I could have, but that would have taken forever. This is good enough.
• Candidate names are characters only for now, no romanization.
• some areas in Taipei that should be labeled as 里 are labeled 裡 instead. That's the fault of a Google version of some PDF I was cutting and pasting information from, and I didn't want to correct it myself (yet).
• I don't have any KMT candidates listed yet because I haven't been able to get my hands on a complete nomination list.
  
• I lack hard data on how most of Taipei County, Tainan and Kaohsiung lean (by district, that is), but this should be fixed in due time as the election approaches and more analysis and polls come out. The good thing is I have data for all other areas.
  
• I originally made some omissions when numbering the districts, so a few places (sorry Taichung County-5!) are at the bottom of the list instead of with the other districts in the same county/city.

I invite everyone to take a look and give their suggestions. If you want, you can even have the KML data that would allow you to update/modify information on the map yourself. Just ask or use the KML button in Google maps.

Some articles

A couple of interesting articles today. The first, an article titled The Blue and the Green out of the Weekly Standard. I'm no fan of the publication, but the article seems to be fairly well written.

Second, the contest for DPP nomination is officially over because the DPP amended rules to avoid the opinion poll and all three other candidates officially stepped down. So enough of the speculation that this isn't over already.

The Annie Huang AP article pointed out at The View from Taiwan: Hsieh Win: Media Round-Up isn't bad, but the headline and opening line is comical: what was surprising about the Hsieh win? He was clearly the favorite.

There seems to be a feeling that Hsieh will be a more acceptable figure to China, and it doesn't seem to just be just Western imaginination. Chinese scholars are dropping the same sort of hints in interviews, though I'm not sure what they're so pleased about. Frank Hsieh might believe the constitution is straight forward about One China, but there's not a chance in hell he'll end up towing the line Beijing would like to see.

And finally, there's an article that a former Chinese professor wrote on Democratic Socialism being the only way forward for China a couple of months ago for a Chinese periodical called 炎黄春秋. It was published there, but the Chinese media seems to be ignoring it even as it draws plenty of media attention in Hong Kong (and some in Taiwan).

Primary Results: In Depth (2)

Moving on the the legislative side of the equasion which is far more interesting (full raw details here at the DPP site):

Here are the graphics for the raw results, also from United Daily News (Liberty Times printed these in the paper, but they can't be viewed online). From left to right, they are the results for at large nominees, district nominees, and how the so called "11 bandits" fared (very poorly). In total, 46 of 73 districted nominees were chosen (though 27 still must go through the opinion poll stage). The final decisions for all legislative nominees won't be made until late June (6/20).

I'll be incorporating data on each candidate into a Google Map that will show each district, list what areas are in that district and show the candidates from each party who will run in that district. I will also add the information on how those districts would have voted (blue-green) during the last legislative election if the district had been thus-drawn.


I'm also going to link you here to some of the good analysis that can be found in Liberty Times.

不分區立委初選 深綠出頭天
(Check out all the other articles linked on the right side of the page to see more details on the legislative results.)

In related news, Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office Spokesman Chung Chung-hsiao (鍾忠孝) said investigators yesterday had summoned 10 people for questioning on suspicion they bribed voters in yesterday's DPP poll.

Investigators said that people around Shan Feng Temple (三鳳宮) and in Gushan District (鼓山區) were suspected of accepting cash from candidates' campaigners in exchange for their votes, Chung said.

Primary Results: In Depth

As I wrote before, Frank Hsieh won the primary. Today there is a joint news conference by all the candidates to express their solidarity behind Hsieh. Su Chen-chang put an ad on page A5 of the Liberty Times to thank his supporters and call for solidarity.

Remember, they could have dragged this out and forced another round of opinion polls before having a final candidate, but thankfully the candidates all saw the writing on the wall and decided to cut the crap. Though the DPP still must hold the opinion poll and spend the money for it, thanks to party regulations.

The final vote count was:
Frank Hsieh 44.66% (62,849 votes)
Su Chen-chang 33.40% (46,994 votes)
Annette Lu 6.16% (8,666 votes)
Yu Shyi-kun 15.78% (22,211 votes)

The United Daily News (聯合報) also did a poll last night to see how the Ma/Hsieh matchup looks. Their polls are always wildly inaccurate since green people tend to lie or not answer their poll, but the polls are still fun to look at.

Hsieh wins

After Hsieh came out on top of the party member part of the primary, both Yu and Su pulled out of the race before the opinion poll was even taken and said they were throwing their support behind Hsieh.

I don't know if Lu's said anything. More details for you tomorrow, including some legislative results.

The Wang-Ma hip hop crew

I don't think an American politician would be caught dead wearing this, but I also wish they'd be willing to wear such things.

DPP Primary tomorrow

And boy, am I excited.

Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) is hinting that tomorrow's vote is not only a vote on A-bian as well as her. In other words, a vote for Lu is a vote for A-bian. Not going to work.

Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) believes he can get over half of the vote. I'm not so optimistic for him, though he has consistantly been more confident of his support among the party rank and file than the public at large.

Su Chen-chang (蘇貞昌) is spending the day talking about concrete policies, saying he would like to upgrade the status of bicycles and praising the upgrade in Taipei County's status to special municiplaity while promising other areas won't suffer in funds. Good for him.

Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) is brushing off suggestions that A-bian accidently let it slip that he's a Su suporter last night. Those reports are based on the fact that during an interview last night, A-bian was listing slogans from each candidate and went a little too far when reciting Su's. Su's slogan is "If Taiwan wants to win, we should vote for Su Chen-chang." A-bian went as far as "Su" in that slogan before cutting himself off ( 「台灣如果要贏，要選蘇…」). I believe he would never intentionall back a person the day before the primary, so I think Frank's right.

Other than that, Hsieh is complaining that Su won't investigate who leaked the document related the his investigation, while the China Times reports the Ministry of Justice says they "can't investigate." I'm a little confused about the reasoning they use as explained in the article.

Other than that, the legislative primary is also being held at the same time tomorrow. I'll be sure to update you as nominees are decided on!