BEIJING — Taiwan’s citizens will vote Saturday for leaders of its five biggest cities after a long campaign in which the issues — good governance, petty corruption, empathy with the average man — have not been just domestic, but often rigorously local.
But the nation’s overriding diplomatic issue, relations with the Chinese mainland, is likely to be foremost in analysts’ and scholars’ minds as they parse the results.
President Ma Ying-jeou has pushed hard for closer economic and political relations with Beijing. But his party, the Kuomintang, faces a surprisingly stiff challenge from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which is cooler to the idea.
Victory in a majority of the five contests, especially the race for mayor in the capital, Taipei, would give the opposition a platform from which to wage a pitched battle against Mr. Ma in the 2012 presidential campaign. The five contested cities — Taipei, Sinbei, Taichung, Kaohsiung and Tainan — together make up about three-fifths of Taiwan’s population.
“If we have major metropolitan elections go to a green majority” — the color of the Democratic Progressives — “that will significantly weaken the president’s power in conducting negotiations with China,” said Alexander Huang, a director of graduate studies in international affairs at Tamkang University in Taiwan.
“More important,” he added, “one of the new metropolitan mayors would be a quite natural future presidential candidate in challenging Ma.”
That would-be mayor is Su Tseng-chang, a career politician with the Democratic Progressives, who faces Mayor Hau Lung-bin in Taipei, which most analysts say is the closest race. The election is seen as crucial because the Taipei mayor’s post was the springboard to the presidency both for Mr. Ma and his predecessor.
Mr. Su, a former prime minister and his party’s 2008 vice presidential candidate, presents himself as a proven administrator with a common touch. Mr. Hau, the Kuomintang candidate, has struggled with a lackluster assessment of his performance in office; a recent poll by Taiwan’s CommonWealth Magazine ranked his approval rating at 21st of the nation’s 25 top municipal leaders.
Analysts say Mr. Su could be a formidable opponent in 2012 against Mr. Ma, whose popularity has slipped since late 2009, when his government bungled disaster relief in the aftermath of a typhoon.
On the election’s eve, news services reported late Friday that the son of a former Kuomintang chairman and government leader was shot in the face as he spoke at a suburban Taipei rally in support of a Kuomintang candidate for City Council. The shooting victim, Lien Sheng-wen, also known as Sean Lien, was reported to be in stable condition at Taipei Hospital.
The motive for the shooting was unknown. The Associated Press quoted a Taiwan television report as saying that a suspect apprehended by the police was nicknamed Horse Face, suggesting a link to Taiwan criminal gangs.
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