The ruling DPP yesterday closed its registration for prospective legislative candidates. It aims to nominate 80 candidates out of 146 registered hopefuls for the year-end legislative election.
A total of 117 legislative candidates, including 31 nominees registered for legislators at large (
DPP Chairman Frank Hsieh (
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"But there should be no problem for the DPP to hold onto its current 67 seats," Chen added.
Endorsing Chen's views, Chin Heng-wei (
"Anyone who wants to run [for public office] is inevitably supported by certain factions within the party. This does not help the party to increase its votes," Chin said. He therefore added that it would be a tough fight if the DPP were to win half of the 225 legislative seats.
Lee Yong-ping (李永萍), a former DPP member but now director of the People First Party's (PFP) legislative caucus, said that the DPP's prospective candidates were competitive since former members of the National Assembly, such as Liu I-te (劉一德), and incumbent government officials, including Lo Wen-chia (羅文嘉) and Hsiao Bikhim (蕭美琴) would all participate in the election. Most of them have the advantage of enjoying high popularity.
She suggested, however, that the election would be a strategically tricky one for DPP candidates.
"To avoid being connected with the DPP government's failures, candidates will have to show a degree of independence from the party. But at the same time, they will need to ally themselves with the party in order to take advantage of its resources," Lee said.
Lee said she believed that the candidates to be fielded by the DPP had good social images and were well-qualified to be members of the legislature. Still, she was not worried that the DPP would outshine the PFP in terms of election performance since "supporters of the DPP and the PFP rarely overlap."
Meanwhile, the DPP's survey center yesterday completed its public polls for candidates for Tainan and Kaohsiung county commissioners. The poll score accounts for 70 percent of candidates' primary scores.
A total of 28 candidates had previously registered to run for the commissioner and mayoral elections in 14 counties and cities.
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