Chiang Kai-shek’s great-grandson declared victory in the race to be mayor of Taiwan’s capital, as the ruling party suffered a resounding defeat in island-wide local elections a little more than a year before a new president is chosen.
Chiang Wan-an of the opposition Kuomintang will become, at 43 years old, the youngest-ever mayor of Taipei, a position that can serve as a springboard to the presidency.
“Everyone, we did it,” he told a crowd of several thousand people outside his campaign headquarters Saturday night. He didn’t mention simmering tensions between the U.S. and China over the democratically ruled island’s autonomy in his brief remarks.
