James Jay Carafano
Recently, the Taiwan People’s Party nominated its chairman, former Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je, as its presidential candidate. The Kuomintang (KMT) party picked New Taipei City mayor Hou Yu-ih. Vice President Lai Ching-te will be the nominee of the DPP. Nominations were widely expected. Now all three main parties have candidates and the campaigns are going to start in earnest.
Michael Cunningham gave us this rundown.
What’s the bottom line? The nominations turn it into a very competitive three-way race between Hou, Ko, Lai Ching-te. The most recent opinion polls show Lai slightly ahead of Hou, with Ko farther behind, but the polls were conducted before Hou or Ko were official candidates and while Foxconn founder Terry Gou was still in the race for the KMT.
Who are the candidates? Hou is extremely popular, and easily won re-election as mayor of New Taipei City last year. He is the KMT’s best shot at taking back the presidency. He is seen as a hard worker who gets things done, which sets him apart from the “do-nothing” image many Taiwanese have of their politicians (especially KMT politicians). Also going for him is the fact that he is far from the stereotypical KMT old guard politician. Like Lee Teng-hui (the first democratically elected president, also of the KMT), he’s ethnically Taiwanese, as opposed to being a descendant of the mainlanders who fled to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek. This gives him credibility among the portion of the population that see the KMT as outsiders who are out of touch with the average Taiwanese. Little is known about Hou’s China policy, as he has never had to deal with the China threat. He will elaborate more on his policy in the coming months, but so far, it seems consistent with the KMT’s official position, which is a rejection of both formal independence and unification under “one country, two systems.”