Outgoing ruling Kuomintang Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung said Sunday the party will do some deep soul searching following its embarrassing defeat in Saturday's Yunlin County legislative by-election. 'The loss serves as a loud alarm to get us to make further reforms and improvements, ' Wu said after casting his ballot in an internal election to pick the party's new Central Committee members. In Saturday's by-election, KMT candidate Chang Gen-hui received only 29,278 votes, or 23.2 percent of the ballots cast, lagging far behind Liu Chien-kuo of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who garnered 74,272 votes, or 58.8 percent of the total. The third candidate Chang Hui-yuan, formerly of the KMT who launched an independent bid for the vacant legislative seat, garnered 22,747 votes, or 18 percent of the total. Arguing that Yunlin County boasts a very special political environment, Wu said the KMT faced an uphill battle in the race from the very beginning. In a departure from the traditional practice of fielding a local nominee backed by a political faction, Wu said the party nominated a university professor with a Ph.D. in environmental engineering, experience in local administration and a reputation for integrity. 'We believe our insistence on fielding a candidate with a clean image and professional capability was the proper direction in our pursuit of political reform, ' Wu said, suggesting that Saturday's failure was simply a price that the party had to pay in the process of reform. Asked to comment on the DPP's description of the KMT's setback as a manifestation of popular discontent with the KMT administration, Wu said Yunlin County's political environment was too unique to make a broader judgment. Wu said he believes that the 'result could have been different had the election taken place in another city or county.' The south-central county is generally viewed as a rural backwater and characterized by some as 'home to underworld gangsters.' The county was once dominated by local factions which traditionally have had close ties to the KMT as well as irrigation and farmers' associations. But the county has been controlled by the DPP since late 2005. The legislative by-election was held after former KMT Legislator Chang Sho-wen lost the seat he won in the January 2008 legislative elections when his conviction on vote-buying charges was upheld by the Taiwan High Court in June. His father, Chang Hui-yuan, was originally a KMT member, but was stripped of his party membership when he insisted on running for the vacancy left by his son even after the KMT nominated Chang Gen-hui for the race. The split inside the KMT ranks was widely believed to be a factor behind the party's poor showing in the election. Asked whether the Yunlin County electoral result serves as a harbinger of the party's fate in the year-end local government chief elections, Wu said he will work to the best of his ability during the 20 days left in his tenure as party chair to prevent any negative scenarios from occurring. Wu is set to be replaced as KMT chairman by President Ma Ying-jeou on Oct. 17. Ma won the post in a July 26 election in which he ran unopposed. After being postponed twice, the party's Central Committee election finally took place Sunday, with 1,578 party delegates eligible to elect 210 Central Committee members and 105 alternate members. Besides the 210 candidates nominated by party headquarters, 105 party memebrs registered for the election on their own. Since the total number of candidates is same as the number of seats up for grabs, nobody will lose in the vote. The results of the poll are due later Sunday. 