Probably you have seen more than once videos of people fighting (boxing/karate) at some parliament. Quite often these images are from Taiwanese or South Korea parliament. Here below you have a brawl at the Taiwanese parliament on July 2010 while discussing about the EFCA agreement.
Becoming major in Taipei is very important, as traditionally the major will be the future president of Taiwan (that has actually happened for that last two times)
We already explained at the ECFA article that in Taiwan there are two big political parties: the blues (KMT, in favor of open talks and agreements with mainland China) and the greens (DPP, pro Taiwan as an independent country). Here you have a short article at AsiaRed (Spanish only) that explains the current situation.. To be honest Taiwan is doing much better than Spain “…unemployment under control (5%) and expected growth of around 9% for 2010…”
All the elections at Taiwan are always very close, you can check the summary of the polls before the elections. In this recent China Times article they mention that the current situation is 43% for the current major Hau Lung-bin (KMT/Blue) and 42% pel Su Tseng-chang (DPP/Green) but this 1% difference is lower than the calculated potential error in this type of polls.
We can not vote but we have been observing the campaign (it lasts for 3 months!) looking at the posters on the street, the webs, the leaflets, etc. Observations:
The candidates are identified with a number. They get this number in a kind of lottery (it is not related to their positions in the lists). Nobody wants the number 4 (bad luck number for Chinese culture). The numbers are given in the middle of the campaign so they need to add it to the posters and leaftets…
They are able to make fun of themselves. You see candidates dressed like Superman or Spiderman for example.
They like to pose in the pictures in two or three different poses, most of them very fake and not natural at all.
To hug kids and take pictures with them also works here (probably universal for all politicians)
Here you have a collection of images of the campaign from the various candidates and cities (our own pictures and also from here)
To complete the experience we decided to visit a rally from KMT (blue party) at Taipei on Sunday 21st of November. The slogan “Taipei take-off” (of fly high). Take a look at the last pictures as there were some funny characters around.
Poc a veure amb el programa polític (però encara pot ajudar a guanyar un vot extra)21-Nov-2010 16:08, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 5.6, 55.0mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 500
The parties have also embraced internet and the new technologies opportunities. According to this article the green party does a lot better than the blue one on this front.
I jo em queixo de les eleccions americanes…
Actualitzat amb els resultats del dissabte