The mechanisms for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential primary were settled yesterday, including to conducting public opinion polls on both landlines and mobile phones.
Officials in President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) camp said that the process best reflects the current political situation and would yield the strongest candidate for the party.
After deliberation at a DPP Central Executive Committee meeting, a consensus was reached that the two opinion polls would count for 50 percent each and that they would take place from June 10 to June 14.
Photos: Chu Pei-hsiung and Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Tsai and former premier Willam Lai (賴清德) agreed to hold one televised presentation at a date to be fixed by the party executive, committee members who were at the meeting confirmed.
The third main condition was to have contrasting polling, to compare the popular support for Tsai and Lai, as well as to compare their support with the two potential presidential hopefuls from outside of the party — Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), an independent.
“We want to thank the Central Executive Committee members for making progress on the party’s primary process, with no more delays. It shows that we still cherish the party’s founding spirit and its democratic mechanisms,” said DPP Taipei City Councilor Ruan Jhao-syong (阮昭雄), who is also Tsai’s primary bid spokesman.
“We respect the consensus reached at the committee through democratic means, which best reflects the current political situation ... from which the outcome can determine our party’s strongest candidate,” Ruan said.
“It is our wish to carry out the primary process in a rational and harmonious way since it is most important for the DPP to unite to win the 2020 election,” he added.
DPP spokesman Lii Wen (李問) said at a news conference after the meeting said that conditions for the opinion polls reflected changes in society whereby the use of mobile phones has replaced the use of landlines.
Committee members also agreed to update some provisions in the party’s internal mechanism for the “candidate nomination process through public surveys” to give a better indication of the level of support of each candidate, Lii said.
It was decided to “conduct polls with no less than 3,000 samples, with both landlines and mobile phones at no less than 1,500 samples each,” Lii added.
DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) played a key role in the negotiations after he phoned Lai before the meeting and persuaded him that Ko should be included in the polls for comparison, among other issues, committee members said.
DPP Legislator Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲), who represents Lai’s camp, said that he does not accept the outcome and he wanted the minutes of the meeting to record that he opposed it.
“On behalf of Lai, we want to express our regret,” Lin said.
“The Central Executive Committee meeting changed the rules of the game, which ran counter to the wishes of the affected party... It is a bad precedent to change the rules halfway through the primary process. This might have done serious harm to the fairness of the party’s primary process,” he said.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
CHIPMAKING INVESTMENT: J.W. Kuo told legislators that Department of Investment Review approval would be needed were Washington to seek a TSMC board seat Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said he received information about a possible US government investment in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and an assessment of the possible effect on the firm requires further discussion. If the US were to invest in TSMC, the plan would need to be reviewed by the Department of Investment Review, Kuo told reporters ahead of a hearing of the legislature’s Economics Committee. Kuo’s remarks came after US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Tuesday said that the US government is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that
NORTHERN STRIKE: Taiwanese military personnel have been training ‘in strategic and tactical battle operations’ in Michigan, a former US diplomat said More than 500 Taiwanese troops participated in this year’s Northern Strike military exercise held at Lake Michigan by the US, a Pentagon-run news outlet reported yesterday. The Michigan National Guard-sponsored drill involved 7,500 military personnel from 36 nations and territories around the world, the Stars and Stripes said. This year’s edition of Northern Strike, which concluded on Sunday, simulated a war in the Indo-Pacific region in a departure from its traditional European focus, it said. The change indicated a greater shift in the US armed forces’ attention to a potential conflict in Asia, it added. Citing a briefing by a Michigan National Guard senior
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
ENHANCED SECURITY: A Japanese report said that the MOU is about the sharing of information on foreign nationals entering Japan from Taiwan in the event of an emergency The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that Taiwan and Japan had signed an agreement to promote information exchanges and cooperation on border management, although it did not disclose more details on the pact. Ministry spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said the ministry is happy to see that the two nations continue to enhance cooperation on immigration control, in particular because Taiwan and Japan “share a deep friendship and frequent people-to-people exchanges.” “Last year, more than 7.32 million visits were made between the two countries, making it even more crucial for both sides to work closer on immigration and border control,” he said. Hsiao
RSS