All six aspirants for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairpersonship election on May 20 became official candidates yesterday, after they were confirmed to have submitted enough valid signatures from party members to take part in the race.
The six candidates are KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), Vice Chairman and former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), former vice president Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), former KMT vice chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢), former KMT legislator Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛) and former Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Corp president Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜).
The aspirants were required to submit more than 13,322 signatures — 3 percent of eligible KMT members — to qualify as candidates.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
After a review by the party election committee, all six hopefuls were confirmed as eligible to run in the chairperson race.
Although the valid signatures submitted by each aspirant passed the 3 percent threshold, the party did not reveal the number of signatures for each candidate.
Candidates are to participate in two televised debates: the first on Saturday next week and the second on May 6.
The campaign will last two weeks, from May 6 to 19, before party members elect a party chief on May 20 who will serve a term of four years, party officials said.
Results are expected to be announced on the day of the election, party officials added.
According to the KMT charter, one candidate has to garner at least 50 percent of the vote to win the post; otherwise, the top two candidates engage in a run-off.
While the KMT did not reveal the number of valid signatures for each candidate, leaked information indicated that a total of 720,000 signatures were submitted to party headquarters, with about 25 percent deemed valid.
Of the total number of signatures, 128,888 were submitted by Hung, with 24,878 — about 19 percent — deemed valid, causing an uproar among Hung supporters.
Campaign office secretary-general Wu Yu-ren (吳育仁) questioned the motive of the source who leaked the figures.
Wu Yu-ren said that the valid signatures submitted by Hung’s campaign office had been copied by one of the candidates, resulting in fake signatures that were rejected.
He also said that the number of signatures submitted from one electoral district exceeded the number of party members operating there and, as a result, all of the signatures for Hung submitted from that district had to be rejected.
Wu Yu-ren said the efforts of the more than 30 volunteers from Hung’s camp were wasted, as even valid signatures had to be invalidated.
“I apologize to party members who signed in support of Hung. The more signatures that were found copied, the more we had to reject. Whoever the candidate was who produced the copied signatures might end up winning because of this,” he said.
According to the leaked information, only 26,418 of the 108,233 signatures, or 24 percent, submitted by Hau were found to be valid.
Hau said the inflation of the signature numbers distorts the will of the party and affects the fairness of the election.
“Is there someone submitting an excessively inflated number of signatures? We will find out when we open the ballot boxes,” he said.
Han’s camp submitted 57,341 signatures, of which 20,028 (35 percent) were valid; Wu Den-yih submitted 221,891 signatures, of which 67,520 (30 percent) were valid; Chan submitted 104,359 signatures, of which 29,306 (28 percent) were valid; and Pan submitted 100,870, of which 18,347 (18 percent) were valid, the leaked information said.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Hu Wen-chi (胡文琦) said that only 84 percent of the total number of signatures submitted has been reviewed.
About 115,000 signatures remain to be verified, he said.
Hu said the verification process aims to determine whether valid signatures submitted by each of the aspirants meet the 3 percent threshold.
Once 13,322 signatures have been validated, there was no need to look further into the signatures, he said.
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