In remarks that have riled Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) main competitor, former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), in the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential primaries, Tsai’s campaign staff renewed a call for voters to “only support” Tsai in the party’s telephone poll, which opens this evening.
At issue is the design of the official poll, which is used to select the party’s nominee for next year’s presidential election.
In it, each of the DPP’s three presidential hopefuls — Tsai, Su and Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) — are individually matched against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who will be seeking re-election on Jan. 14 next year.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
With a few exceptions, the candidate with the highest support against Ma will take the DPP nomination to run in the presidential election.
The concern is that Su’s supporters would also choose all the DPP candidates over Ma, who is of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
However, by asking supporters to “only support” her, voters for Tsai would only choose Tsai against Ma, which would give her an advantage and, as Su put it yesterday, “harm party unity.”
Online, Tsai supporters have set up a Facebook page and advertisements calling on voters to reply “Tsai-Ma-Ma” — rather than Tsai-Su-Hsu — in the telephone poll.
“When Tsai is matched against [President] Ma; choose Tsai,” read a statement widely copied to other Internet forums and blogs. On questions of Hsu and Su against Ma, choose Ma, it said.
Tsai on Saturday she said the “Tsai-Ma-Ma” idea “sounded pretty creative.”
“We should do our best to avoid methods of asking for support that have attracted controversy and are likely to lead to [skewed results],” she said at a campaign stop yesterday.
This was the second time her campaign has been involved in the dispute.
Earlier, official advertisements also asked supporters to “only support” Tsai, although those ads were later rescinded after drawing anger from Su’s campaign.
Su’s campaign has called the advertisements “divisive and hostile.”
“I would never do this or ask my supporters to say this. [It] risks harming the values of the DPP and the recognition we have of the party,” Su said at a separate campaign stop yesterday.
Former DPP legislator Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡), a speaker at the campaign event, said: “How can [they] ask DPP backers to go so far as to ... support Ma over Su? My heart is broken.”
The controversy over the “only support” slogan has been one of the very few blemishes on the relatively conflict-free presidential primary race between the three DPP contenders.
Tsai and Su have made special efforts to avoid the mudslinging that marked the party’s 2008 presidential primaries, which were followed by a resounding defeat to Ma.
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