A couple of weeks ago, the British media got very excited about a by-election in provincial Kent in which a candidate for the anti-immigration UK Independence party won a solitary seat, doubling its tally in parliament at a stroke. If that was a political upheaval then what occurred last weekend in Taiwan was more like a Krakatoa-sized eruption. In the so-called called “nine-in-one election”, voters chose nine categories of officials, from village heads to city mayors. More than 11,000 seats were at stake and the turnout was a hefty 68 per cent. The result was a crushing defeat for the governing Kuomintang party, or KMT, and a triumph for the opposition Democratic Progressive party.
兩週前，肯特郡的補缺選舉曾令英國媒體大爲興奮，反對移民的英國獨立黨(UKIP)候選人在此贏得一席，一舉將該黨在國會中的席位翻番。如果這已經算是一場政治動盪，那麼上週末臺灣的選舉堪稱喀拉喀託級別的火山爆發。