The results of the 2008 Legislative Yuan elections were both surprising, yet predictable. From the beginning, it was already known that the Democratic Progressive party was it was in big political trouble. On January 12, 2007, it failed to capture its goal of 50 seat, instead it only won 27 seats in the LY; which is about 16.1% less than what it had before the election. In addition to that, it lost all its pan-green coalition partners in the legislature, leaving it as the sole pro-independence party left in the LY. This election was also a surprise to the Kuomintang. They had expected to win 71 of 113 seats, however, instead of wining just the 71 they hoped for, the KMT gain a total of 81 seat. Along with the KMT’s pan-blue coalition partners, it won a total of 85 seats or 75.2% of the 113 seats in LY; a supermajority. The DPP’s loss can be accounted for by two factors:

• the rising popularity of the Kuomintang’s presidential candidate, Ma Ying-jeou
• and the people’s dissatisfaction with ROC President Chen Shui-bian’s DPP administration due to the fact that Chen focused most of his time and the state’s resources on (1) pissing off the mainland with his independence policies, (2) trying to get UN to admit the state into membership as Taiwan, instead of trying to reviving the economy and strengthening it so that it could compete in the world market/economy.

The Kuomintang played well when it focused its campaign on the economy instead of the reunification question. This strategy can be shown in these advertisement:

Although the purpose of these advertisements were to promote the Ma-Siew Kuomintang presidential ticket, both of them were published and aired before and during the Legislative Yuan elections. The message given in these advertisements was that “The DPP has failed the people and has neglected the state’s economy. To survive, Taiwan must rebuilt its economy and compete in the world market. A vote for the Kuomintang is a vote for Taiwan”.

Looking at the results, it looks like the people of Taiwan have spoken and said that “we’ve had enough of this DPP inaction to fix our economy”. Although anything could happen, it looks like the recent victory has given a lot of momentum to Ma Ying-jeou’s bid to become the next president of the Republic of China. And my prediction is that he will indeed win and bring back stability to Taiwan’s economy and to the cross-Strait relations with the Mainland.