Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators are divided in their support for President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) running for re-election next year, with some backing Premier William Lai (賴清德) as the party’s nominee instead.
Tsai’s supporters are promoting Lai as her running mate, but Lai should run for president with former DPP legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) as his running mate, DPP Legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) said on Monday.
Two new candidates are needed to “breathe fresh air into the party,” which suffered defeats in the Nov. 24 nine-in-one elections, Huang said.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
However, DPP Legislator Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) said that Tsai Ing-wen and Lai would be a “golden combination.”
The president has come under fire from pro-independence advocates, but if independence-leaning Lai were to run with her, she could overcome this, Tsai Yi-yu said, adding that without such a collaboration Tsai Ing-wen would fair poorly in opinion polls.
However, for Lai to run with Tsai Ing-wen, the DPP would first need to consolidate its cliques, which remains a challenge for the party, Tsai Yi-yu said, adding that he has not heard of any plans for Lai to run for president.
The DPP’s best chance for victory would be with Lai and Chen as nominees, as Lai has a good public reputation and Chen no longer has the Kaohsiung mayorship to worry about, Huang said.
However, the chance of the two teaming up as nominees is unlikely, unless the president were to stay out of the race, Huang said.
Once the party is finished with a Cabinet reshuffle, it would need to start preparing for the presidential election and will probably start soliciting opinions on candidates by March or April, he said.
The presidential race would likely be between Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Tsai Ing-wen, he added.
The DPP would need to consolidate its cliques to have a chance in the elections, Huang said.
DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said that it is too early to make predictions about who will run in the elections.
The party would wait for a new premier to take office and then see if any personnel adjustments are needed in the Presidential Office, he said, adding that nominees would not be announced before April or May.
Tsai Ing-wen has rejected rumors that former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) would take over as premier and has said that everyone hopes Lai will remain in office, Lee said.
The government must accept Lai’s resignation if the premiership is not the “right path” for him, Tsai Yi-yu said, encouraging senior party members to be more open about nominees.
The DPP must communicate better internally, he added.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods