After New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced his re-election bid yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) New Taipei City mayoral candidate Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) candidate Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) both expressed confidence that they can defeat him in the upcoming year-end elections.
However, Yu and Lin disagreed over what strategy to adopt in the race they must win to get to contest the November election: the poll to determine the final pan-green camp candidate.
Citing an agreement struck between the two parties, Lin said that a head-to-head showdown between himself and Yu is to decide who will be the New Taipei City candidate for the pan-green camp.
The accord between the DPP and TSU stipulated that the parties’ respective nominees would face off against Chu in the preliminary poll, but that if the New Taipei City mayor announces that he is seeking re-election before Thursday, a head-to-head contest would be carried out instead.
Lin said he is confident that he will be selected as the pan-green camp’s pick for the race.
“A head-to-head poll favors me since this type of mechanism benefits smaller political parties more than their larger counterparts,” the TSU candidate said.
He stressed that the purpose of the primary poll is to select a candidate who will win the election.
“If Yu is afraid to challenge even me, how can he go up against Chu?” Lin said, adding that his goal for the election is to defeat the incumbent by a margin of 100,000 votes.
Without responding directly to Lin’s comments, Yu on the same day said that he is “not as weak against Chu as poll results may have suggested.”
He also criticized the Chinese Nationalist Party for waffling in naming its New Taipei City mayoral candidate.
“First, it seemed like it would New Taipei City Deputy Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), then [KMT] whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池), then former Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), then Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and now Chu,” he said.
“The KMT has been beating around the bush,” Lin said, adding that the ruling party “should not use New Taipei City as its political stepping stone.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Yu said that he “respects the decisions made between the two parties” to hold the head-to-head poll.
However, DPP Deputy Secretary General Hung Yao-fu (洪耀福) said that a poll pitting Yu and Lin respectively against Chu will be carried out as planned if the KMT has not officially named Chu as its candidate by Thursday evening, the same day the vote is to be held.
Prior to the preliminary poll, Yu and Lin will battle it out in their second televised policy address this afternoon.
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