Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said she is confident about the upcoming by-elections on Saturday and vowed that all five of the party’s nominees will be elected.
Tsai waved to cheering supporters with a smile on her face, while accompanying the DPP candidate in Changhua County’s fourth electoral district, Chen Su-yueh (陳素月), as the convoy passed through streets.
“The party is sparing no efforts in the last week before the election to achieve the best results by getting all five of our candidates [for by-elections] elected,” Tsai said.
“However, I would like to remind all our supporters that, the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] is a political party with many resources, hence the KMT’s full mobilization of all its affiliated organizations in the last stage of the election campaign could be our biggest challenge,” she said.
“Therefore, I would like to urge all campaign staff and candidates to do their best and fight until the end,” she added.
Legislative seats in five constituencies, including Miaoli, Nantou, Changhua and Pingtung counties, as well as in Greater Taichung, are vacant as former legislators representing those districts were elected local government heads in the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 29 last year.
Asked to comment on the proposal by the DPP Yunlin County chapter director Hsu Ken-wei (許根尉) that the party should skip the primary election for the presidential candidate for next year’s presidential elections, and directly declare Tsai a candidate, Tsai said that since the party has its own regulations on nomination, “the issue should be handled accordingly.”
Hsu made the suggestion on Saturday, following remarks made by former presidential adviser and Taiwan independence advocate Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) that he is opposed to having Tsai as the party’s presidential candidate, and that Greater Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) will not be absent from a primary.
Hsu said that, as a primary might lead to fractions in the party, it would be better to skip it and move to the decision to nominate Tsai as the candidate.
Tsai ran as the party’s candidate in the 2012 presidential election.
Meanwhile, Tsai also agreed with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) statement that, Taiwan and China should not become “one country, two systems,” but should be “two countries with one system.”
“By that, I think Ko was referring to two things: sovereignty and democracy,” Tsai said.
“We all insist that Taiwan is a sovereign nation, and cherish our democracy,” she said.
“No matter how it is said, sovereignty and democracy are what we own and share together as Taiwanese,” she said.
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