A couple of days ago, there were several reports theorizing how the 101-floor skyscraper ‘Taipei 101’ may be causing earthquakes in Taipei (via Jason).

As if on demand, this evening at 6.15 there was a healthy bump which turned out to be a 4.0 magnitude earthquake. Not a huge quake, but enough to wake you up – and interestingly the epicentre was less than 3km from ‘Taipei 101’ (data from Taiwan’s CWB).

Here’s an image of how close the earthquake was to the building (or the zoomable google maps version). I’m not sure I can remember an earthquake (that I could feel) which was centred on Taipei before; interesting coincidence …

As widely expected, the local elections in Taiwan last weekend proved to be a disaster for the DPP and a triumph for the KMT. The best summary of the results comes from Ma Ying-jeou:

“This is not a triumph for the KMT but for the Taiwanese people,” KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in a victory speech last night. “The DPP was not defeated by the KMT, but by itself.”

Pretty much true, but a strange statement for the KMT Chairman … perhaps he’ll also be running in 2008 on a “We may be useless, but the other lot are worse” platform.

Of course, these being local elections, the massive KMT victory will have absolutely no effect on national policy. This point has been largely lost on most of the media and politicians, who have been desperately trying to attach great significance to the result. Here’s an example:

Although yesterday’s elections were local government polls, the ruling and opposition parties considered the results crucial to gaining momentum ahead of the 2008 presidential election, raising the stakes in the contest.

Momentum for … 2008? If that really were the case, I’d suggest the KMT have peaked a tad early. As if to prove how quickly this election will be forgotten (and any ‘momentum’ will disappear), today’s ‘Apple Daily’ has already reverted to their standard blood-covered body with associated cartoon-figure reenactment.

What will happen as a result is a much-needed shakeup inside the DPP. DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang has already resigned, while Premier Frank Hsieh has offered his resignation to President Chen (although it remains to see whether Chen will accept that or not). However, who resigns or loses is often quite different to who gets blamed; most of the pre-election criticism of the DPP was centred around Hsieh (with his links to the Kaohsiung MRT scandal and my favourite idiot Pasuya Yao) and Chen, while Su is still a fairly popular figure – so Hsieh may be the one with the bigger question marks over his future.

There was a much more important event in Taiwan over the weekend than elections. Posting may become a bit sporadic for the next few days/months/years due to the arrival on Friday night of this fella.

There will be plenty of people watching Taiwan’s elections this weekend:

More than 100 political observers from around 20 countries have been invited to Taiwan to observe the December 3 “three-in-one” elections, the Central Election Commission reported yesterday.

Of the political observers, about 20 have been invited by the Democratic Pacific Union established by Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮). This group, including parliamentarians, political party leaders and academics, will be coming from Japan, South Korea, Canada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, New Zealand, Palau, Guam, the Solomon Islands, Peru and Chile, according to CEC officials.

Observers from Hong Kong and Macau are expected to form the largest group.

Taiwan actually has a very well-organised, open and efficient election process. But something tells me that it isn’t the logisitics of holding an election which those specially administered regions have a problem with …

A recent survey has found that 77% of Taiwanese are annoyed by the upcoming local elections:

As Taiwan’s political parties gear up for Saturday’s election, a recent survey has shown that 77 percent of local workers felt election-related events had impacted on their normal lives, 1111 Manpower Bank said yesterday.

In Taiwan, where various elections are held every year, some 58 percent of the respondents said that they were “not enthusiastic” or “not extremely unenthusiastic” about the widely reported upcoming election.

Now, one thing to remember is that Taipei City and Kaohsiung City aren’t having any elections this time around (they both elected their mayors a couple of years ago). Given that over 4 million of the 22+ million Taiwanese are resident in these two cities, only just over 80% of Taiwan is involved in any election. Now factor out the estimated 800,000 people who were involved in political rallies over the weekend, and what does that leave you? By my maths, 78% of people living in Taiwan are either not living in an election area, or participated in a rally last weekend. Or, to put it another way:
99% of non-rally attending voters are annoyed by this election.

OK. I am playing a bit fast and loose with the figures: It’s certainly possible to live in Taipei and be affected by the election that the rest of the country is having, the estimates for rallies are by the political parties (who are unlikely to underestimate attendance), and many of the rally attendees will also be from Taipei. However, I feel my methods are at least as scientific as your average opinion poll in Taiwan – after all this one claims:

The survey gathered 1,588 effective samples and was conducted over the Internet in the period November 16 to 29, with a confidence margin of 95 percent.

95% Confidence level in an internet survey? Taiwanese pollsters: the only people who make internet surveys seem scientific!

Incidentally, the title of this post comes from the claim by the survey that one third of people were suffering from “election-trauma syndrome”. I wonder whether this condition covers my impulse to start swearing at the TV as yet another advert for a politician from the other end of the country comes on?