Looking at the abacus from the Chenghuang Temple 1128 Retired scholar Lin Jian is urging voters to make good use of the ballot abacus in their hands

With 20 days left before local elections in Taiwan, Lin Jianzheng, a retired professor at Yangming Jiaotong University, wrote in an article that the large abacus hung in the Chenghuang Temple reads, "Man has a thousand calculations, but God has one calculation." In a democratic society, the votes in the hands of the people are another abacus. God’s account is reckoned behind you, and the electorate’s account is reckoned at every election. People are watching with their eyes wide open to see whether the political parties are acting reasonably or not. On voting day, they will do a total ledger for each party. The power of political parties comes from the people, and the people can take it back.

Taiwan will elect local county and city heads and public opinion representatives in 20 days. Lin Jianzheng believes that Taiwan's voters have also settled their accounts several times. The Sunflower Movement in 2014, coupled with the food safety crisis and sluggish governing reputation, led to the Kuomintang's disastrous defeat in the local elections at the end of the year. In 2018, the Democratic Progressive Party came into full power. Controversies continued over policies such as pension reform and one-case-one-break policy. The Korean Wave swept across Taiwan, and the DPP suffered a major setback. By 2026, he cited three accounts that voters will have to settle in 2026. The first one is the strong action of the majority of Congress. In 2024, the amendment to the powers of Congress was passed amid controversy, triggering "blue birds" to take to the streets. The Constitutional Court later declared that part of it was unconstitutional; the justices nominated by the president , Supervisory Committee, and NCC members have been repeatedly blocked, and the operation of independent agencies is in trouble; this year's general budget was the first time that the budget was not reviewed during the budget session. The 1.25 trillion yuan special defense budget proposed by the Executive Yuan also repeatedly stalled, and was finally read for the third time with the upper limit of 780 billion yuan.

The second point is the proportion of cross-strait relations. Kuomintang League Chief Fu Kunqi will lead 17 Blue Committee members to visit China in 2024 and meet with Wang Huning, Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference; KMT Chairman Cheng Lai-wen held a "Zheng-Xi Meeting" with Xi Jinping in April this year, based on the "1992 Consensus and Opposition to Taiwan Independence" as the common basis. In addition, the special national defense regulations deleted the words "Chinese Communist Military Threat" and were criticized for being too pro-China, causing social doubts about national security, and some Blue camp candidates were soft-cut.

The third one is that all the general recalls supported by the green camp in 2025 were not passed. The ruling party suffered a major setback and was criticized for intensifying social opposition; personnel cases such as justices were rejected. However, in this atmosphere, the Taipei mayoral candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party Shen Boyang set off an "ocean current"; supporters regarded it as a backlash against the majority in Congress, while critics regarded it as just an online momentum. Nowadays, the voters' calculations are in everyone's hands, and the outcome will be known for 1128 years.