Crass electoral politics and the role of a militant civil society

The principal legacy of the Sunflower Movement is that more and more Taiwanese are now paying attention to the quality of the leadership between elections and are willing to take action if quality is found to be lacking 

Merely 48 hours to go before Taiwanese across the nation cast their votes in the nine-in-one local elections. With regulations barring the release of polling data ten days prior to the election, one can only now speculate about how each party, along with independent candidates, will fare on Nov. 29. What is known, however, is that facing the prospects of a major setback, the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has begun to sound desperate and taken eleventh-hour measures that, while possibly giving its candidates an edge over their opponents, could backfire by further discrediting them in the eyes of a watchful—and battle hardened—civil society. 

My article, published today on the CPI Blog, University of Nottingham, continues here.