The Republic Party yesterday announced its legislator-at-large list, including Chen Hu-men (陳虎門), a former intelligence official who was jailed over his involvement in the assassination of a California-based journalist during the Martial Law era.
Lawyer Chen Han-chou (陳漢洲) heads the list, with labor union representative Lin Hsi-wei (林錫維) ranking second.
Republic Party Chairperson Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩) said the party hopes voters would give its candidates an opportunity to enter the Legislative Yuan and use their professional backgrounds to increase its effectiveness and address the nation’s problems.
“This time, we have made sure to include people with a background in the military and intelligence, because the government has neglected this area for a long time,” Hsu said.
Chen is ranked third on the party’s list, while Lee Tien-tuo (李天鐸) — a former National Security Bureau colonel — is ranked fifth.
Chen spent time in prison in the 1980s for his role in training the assassins of Henry Liu (劉宜良) after Liu published an unauthorized biography of then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國).
The involvement of intelligence agency personnel in the incident — known as the Jiangnan case, a reference to Liu’s pen name — created tensions in relations with the US because of Liu’s status as a naturalized US citizen and the fact that he was killed on US soil.
Chen is to register under the name Chen Yi-chiao (陳弈樵), which he said he adopted following his time in prison.
He is rumored to have been selected because of a close relationship with Buddhist leader Miao Tien (妙天), who is also a former intelligence official, media reports said.
Miao Tien is Hsu’s Buddhist master and is rumored to have close ties to party officials.
Hsu — who is the running mate of People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜) — denied rumors that her party had nominated a separate slate of at-large district candidates after negotiations with the PFP broke down.
Today is the deadline for registering candidates, with the PFP announcing its slate on Tuesday.
Separately, the New Power Party (NPP) announced a slate of eight “task-oriented” legislative district candidates to put its number of district candidates above the 10-candidate threshold required to be eligible to allocate at-large legislators.
In response to complaints from pan-green candidates in districts shared between the NPP and other opposition parties that they had not been consulted beforehand, NPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) reiterated the party’s stance that the candidates would not campaign for themselves, instead seeking to win the NPP more votes on the at-large legislative ballot.
If pan-green candidates still have concerns, NPP candidates would be willing to campaign for them, he said.
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