The wide-open Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential primary saw a fresh entrant on Monday when a 53-year-old man with little political experience signed up.
Huang Po-shou (黃柏壽), who was chief secretary of the Dayuan township office in the former Taoyuan county before the county was upgraded to special municipality status in December last year, was the second person to pick up an application form on the first day of registration.
Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) registered her candidacy earlier on Monday.
The KMT race was thrown up in the air after KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), seen as the party’s most competitive candidate, saidlast week that he would not run.
Other potential candidates, including Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), have yet to make their intentions known.
Some of the reluctance to run may be because any KMT candidate is expected to be a major underdog in the race after the party suffered a major defeat in local elections in Nov. 29 last year fueled by the low popularity of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) KMT administration.
Just signing up for the primary is not a guarantee that the person will actually compete in it. Applicants must complete the necessary forms and collect the endorsement of 5 percent of the KMT’s 300,000 members.
However, Huang is hoping to capitalize on his unknown status.
“Let the public elect a member of the public,” he said, urging common people to come forward to manage their own affairs.
Huang said that the plight of the “average Joe” has been ignored in the past since most national policies tend to favor consortia, and the only way for ordinary people to protect their interests would be to vote for one of their own.
He lost the election for Dayuan Township mayor in 2009. Before serving as the township’s chief secretary, he worked as an engineer at National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology and as a researcher at the Construction and Planning Agency.
Monday was the first day of the nearly month-long period KMT members will have to formally register their candidacies in the party primary, which will be held in mid-June.
Would-be KMT presidential primary contenders must be party members and pay a refundable security deposit of NT$2 million (US$64,160).
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