Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential hopeful Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday downplayed speculation that she had received two high-level endorsements, which could provide an eleventh-hour boost to her campaign.
With the telephone polls used to settle the DPP nominations scheduled to start on Monday, Tsai and Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), who are about evenly split in opinion polls, are sure to look on with great interest.
“I don’t know where the [speculation] comes from,” Tsai said of reports that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Nobel laureate Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) could give her campaign a much-needed boost.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei times
“Both elders have been following what I’ve been doing, but I don’t feel I need to disturb them at this point,” she said, adding that her campaign office would not consider actively seeking the two to stump at her events.
Whether Lee Teng-hui has expressed support for Tsai became the object of speculation after Tsai made it a priority to meet him shortly after she announced her election bid last month.
However, Lee Teng-hui later spoke out against Tsai’s plan to seek to phase out nuclear power.
A source close to Tsai’s campaign said that to avoid unnecessary competition for senior pan-green support between Tsai and Su’s campaign, Tsai would not actively seek the former president’s endorsement.
Lee Teng-hui and Tsai are expected to appear together at an event hosted by the Taiwan Advocates think tank, on Saturday next week, three days after the telephone polls wrap up and the nominee is announced.
In related news, Su also spoke in favor of party unity during a campaign stop in Taoyuan County, saying he would not oppose the public supporting any DPP candidate in the official telephone polls later this month.
The two frontrunners have been involved in controversy on whether respondents should “only support” a single DPP candidate or support all three, as the poll format matches off each candidate against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
“Although there’s competition, at the same time we need to call on supporters to stay united,” Su said. “I won’t call on supporters to ‘only support’ Su Tseng-chang in any of my advertisements.”
Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良), who is lagging behind the two other candidates, visited Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).
Both praised some of his ideas, including forming a coalition government with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
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