While it is inevitable that incumbent officials have more advantages than their rivals when it comes to campaigning, the amount of resources the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government is throwing into its nominees’ campaigns in the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections is still astonishing.
In Taiwan or elsewhere in the world, incumbent candidates are typically able to promote themselves through advertisements paid for by the government, and this is usually a gray area that can be tolerated by most people. However, the actions of the KMT in the Taipei mayoral race have gone far beyond the boundaries of this tacit consent.