The question of who will challenge President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in the 2012 presidential election was again the subject of debate yesterday, as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) fielded questions about the candidacy.
“I’m not thinking about this question at this time. Considering it too early might bring an undesired outcome and we are right in the midst of the special municipality elections,” she told Cable News Channel ETTV host Li Si-duan (李四端) in an interview to be broadcast over the weekend.
Dressed somberly in yesterday’s TV appearance, Tsai appeared eager to highlight the differences in her dual roles as opposition party leader and as the DPP mayoral candidate for Sinbei City (the name by which Taipei County will be known as after it is upgraded in December).
Asked how a loss in Sinbei City would affect her politically, she said that everything would depend on the actual election result — suggesting that even if she lost, she still expected to poll well in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) stronghold.
However, her loss as a candidate wouldn’t affect her standing or leadership within the party, she said.
“We shouldn’t confuse the role of an individual candidate with a party chairperson,” she said.
In a number of candid remarks made on Wednesday, DPP Secretary-General Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) said that party leaders had a long tradition of stepping down following electoral defeats, which he hinted Tsai might do in a worst-case scenario. The DPP is aiming to win at least one more seat in northern Taiwan next month.
However, Tsai said yesterday that she wanted to rise above making that pledge, claiming that she wouldn’t want to influence voters by this method.
She said she didn’t want to see voters “cast a vote that they weren’t going to originally, because they don’t want to see [me] step down.”
During the interview, she also continued to downplay questions about her vague promise to “be responsible to the end” in the face of questions from the KMT as to whether she would finish her four-year term as Sinbei City mayor, if elected next month.
“I don’t want to sound like a pop song here,” she said, stressing that she has already made herself clear on the issue.
“My opponent is heavily politicizing this election campaign,” she added, and it was irresponsible for the KMT to turn this issue into an election topic, she said.
Turning the topic back to a future DPP presidential candidate, Li asked her whether the DPP would be considering a generational change in selecting a future candidate in 2012.
“The general feeling is that a younger candidate is a more ideal candidate,” the 54-year-old Tsai said.
However, lacking experience to deal with Taiwan’s “complicated environment could in fact present a tough challenge,” she added.
Instead she said that none of the four prerequisites she believed necessary to vie for president, involved age. Faced against Taiwan’s problems, a presidential candidate needed to be widely accepted, mature, experienced and stable.
“If they have these conditions, age doesn’t necessarily exclude them,” she said.
Near the end of the interview, Li asked her, “how about you, do you possess these four requirements?”
It was a question that Tsai wisely chose to ignore. “This question is not for [me] to decide, it’s for the [voters],” she said.
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SEMICONDUCTORS: TSMC is able to produce 2-nanometer chips and mass production is expected to be launched by next year, the company said In leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing China is behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) by at least 10 years as the Taiwanese chipmaker’s manufacturing process has progressed to 2 nanometers, National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Minister Wu Cheng-wen (吳誠文) said yesterday. Wu made the remarks during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Education and Culture Committee when asked by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) about a report published in August by the Chinese version of Nikkei Asia that said Taiwan’s lead over China in chip manufacturing was only three years. She asked Wu Cheng-wen if the report was an accurate
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