The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday won five at-large seats to become the third-largest party in the Legislative Yuan, followed by the New Power Party (NPP) with three at-large seats.
The Taiwan Statebuilding Party obtained one regional legislator seat, while independent candidates secured five.
The TPP is a nascent party established in August last year by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who was elected its founding chairman, and while Ko did not run for president, the party nominated 18 regional legislators and announced a list of 29 legislator-at-large nominees.
Photo: CNA
The TPP failed to obtain regional legislator seats, but secured the at-large seats by gaining 1,588,806 or 11.2203 percent of the overall political party votes.
Topping the TPP’s list of legislator-at-large candidates was Taipei Department of Labor Commissioner Lai Hsiang-lin (賴香伶), followed by National Sun Yat-sen University College of Social Science dean Jang Chyi-lu (張其祿), Hon Hai Technology Group Industrial Big Data Office vice president Ann Kao (高虹安) and World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce secretary-general Andy Chiu (邱臣遠).
Ko has said that he hoped that with the founding of the TPP, people would be given another choice besides the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party, and that the TPP, which favors an open and transparent government, aims to gain enough legislative seats to become a critical minority party that would keep the two major parties in check.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
The NPP garnered 7.7549 percent of the party votes, a slight improvement from the 6.1 percent it received in the 2016 elections.
Topping the NPP’s list of at-large nominees is environmentalist Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華), followed by former NPP chairman and human rights lawyer Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) and Claire Wang (王婉諭), whose four-year-old daughter, nicknamed “Little Lightbulb” (小燈泡), was murdered on a street in Taipei in 2016.
In the 2016 elections, aside from the DPP and KMT, only the NPP and the People First Party (PFP) obtained enough party votes to cross the 5-percentage-point threshold and secure legislator-at-large seats, receiving two and three seats respectively.
Photo: CNA
The PFP did not receive enough votes this year.
Under the “single-member constituency, two-vote system,” eligible voters can cast two ballots in the legislative elections, one for a regional candidate and the other for a party, and 34 legislator-at-large seats are distributed between the parties according to the proportion of party votes they obtain.
A record high of 19 parties ran in this year’s elections.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Among the “third-force” parties and independent candidates, the most attention-grabbing legislators-elect are DPP-endorsed Taiwan Statebuilding Party spokesman Wonda Chen (陳柏惟), DPP-endorsed independent Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐), independent Legislator Chao Cheng-yu (趙正宇) and independent candidate Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁).
Wonda Chen won in a traditional KMT stronghold, Taichung’s second electoral district — which includes the Dadu (大肚), Wurih (烏日), Longjing (龍井), Shalu (沙鹿), Wufeng (霧峰) districts and and part of Dali District (大里).
He is the first legislator elected from the Taiwan Statebuilding Party — formerly known as Taiwan Radical Wings — a new party founded in Kaohsiung that is considered to belong to the pro-independence camp.
Photo: Hsiao Fang-chi, Taipei Times
Wonda Chen’s defeat of Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恆) came as a surprise to many, as Yen has been a legislator for two terms after winning a by-election in 2013 to fill the vacant post left by his father, former Non-Partisan Solidarity Union legislator Yen Ching-piao (顏清標), after he was found guilty of corruption.
The Yen family has governed the district for more than a decade.
Lim, the frontman for metal band Chthonic, was re-elected in Taipei’s Zhongzheng-Wanhua (中正-萬華) electoral district by obtaining 81,853 votes, or 44.9137 percent, defeating former KMT legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) a second time.
Lim was first elected in 2016 as an NPP member, but announced in August last year that that he would leave the party to support President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) re-election bid.
However, DPP-endorsed independent Legislator Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸), another former NPP legislator who left the party in August last year, failed to win re-election in Taichung’s third electoral district.
Fu, a former Hualien county commissioner who was imprisoned for eight months between 2018 and last year for insider trading, won in Hualien County by obtaining 64,060 votes, and is to replace DPP Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴).
Chao won in Taoyuan’s sixth electoral district, defeating KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖).
CALL FOR SUPPORT: President William Lai called on lawmakers across party lines to ensure the livelihood of Taiwanese and that national security is protected President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday called for bipartisan support for Taiwan’s investment in self-defense capabilities at the christening and launch of two coast guard vessels at CSBC Corp, Taiwan’s (台灣國際造船) shipyard in Kaohsiung. The Taipei (台北) is the fourth and final ship of the Chiayi-class offshore patrol vessels, and the Siraya (西拉雅) is the Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) first-ever ocean patrol vessel, the government said. The Taipei is the fourth and final ship of the Chiayi-class offshore patrol vessels with a displacement of about 4,000 tonnes, Lai said. This ship class was ordered as a result of former president Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) 2018
‘SECRETS’: While saying China would not attack during his presidency, Donald Trump declined to say how Washington would respond if Beijing were to take military action US President Donald Trump said that China would not take military action against Taiwan while he is president, as the Chinese leaders “know the consequences.” Trump made the statement during an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes program that aired on Sunday, a few days after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea. “He [Xi] has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘we would never do anything while President Trump is president,’ because they know the consequences,” Trump said in the interview. However, he repeatedly declined to say exactly how Washington would respond in
WARFARE: All sectors of society should recognize, unite, and collectively resist and condemn Beijing’s cross-border suppression, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng said The number of Taiwanese detained because of legal affairs by Chinese authorities has tripled this year, as Beijing intensified its intimidation and division of Taiwanese by combining lawfare and cognitive warfare, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) made the statement in response to questions by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Puma Shen (沈柏洋) about the government’s response to counter Chinese public opinion warfare, lawfare and psychological warfare. Shen said he is also being investigated by China for promoting “Taiwanese independence.” He was referring to a report published on Tuesday last week by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency,
‘ADDITIONAL CONDITION’: Taiwan will work with like-minded countries to protect its right to participate in next year’s meeting, the foreign ministry said The US will “continue to press China for security arrangements and protocols that safeguard all participants when attending APEC meetings in China,” a US Department of State spokesperson said yesterday, after Beijing suggested that members must adhere to its “one China principle” to participate. “The United States insists on the full and equal participation of all APEC member economies — including Taiwan — consistent with APEC’s guidelines, rules and established practice, as affirmed by China in its offer to host in 2026,” the unnamed spokesperson said in response to media queries about China putting a “one China” principle condition on Taiwan’s
RSS