On the eve of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) primary for the Taipei mayoral election today, independent candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said he would rather run against former EasyCard Corp chairman Sean Lien (連勝文) than against KMT Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中).
It would be a “more interesting” election if Lien wins the KMT primary because Ting might run the election in a more “conventional manner” by appealing to voters through their political affiliation, and that would take the country backward to what it was 10 years ago, Ko said.
Regardless of whom the KMT would nominate today, Ko said he would never make light of a KMT candidate because the party possesses huge financial assets.
With these at its disposal, the KMT is like “millennium witch,” Ko said in response to media enquiries when he accompanied Hsieh Wei-chou (謝維洲), son of former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), on a trip to show support for a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) primary for the city council elections.
Ko, a surgeon at National Taiwan University, enjoys wide support in the pan-green camp. He prefers to run as an independent to bridge the green-blue division, which he sees as a major obstacle to Taiwan’s advancement.
The DPP was scheduled to decide whether the party would support Ko in the election by not nominating a candidate for the election in June, although there were four hopefuls competing for its nomination, former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄) and DPP legislators Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) and Pasuya Yao (姚文智).
Asked about news reportedly leaked from an unnamed source at the DPP’s task force on the nomination issue that Ko suffered a significant drop in his support in a recent poll conducted after the Sunflower movement protest, while Koo and Yao both gained support because they both increased their visibility during the period, Ko said that the poll result was incomprehensible to him.
“How could there be a 20 percent drop in my support rate in 20 days?” Ko said.
Ko said he would believe that the poll was genuine if information such as sample size, methods and polling institution was also provided.
“Taiwan is never short on rumors, and rumors will only be stopped by the wise,” he said.
“It’s a bad habit that everyone wags his tongue too freely,” he added.
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