Eight prospective candidates have registered to run as independents in next year’s presidential election, the Central Election Commission announced yesterday.
They are former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), Huang Tuo-yu (黃多玉), Lan Hsin-chi (藍信祺), Tseng Kun-ping (曾坤炳), Huang Jung-chang (黃榮章), Yang Shih-kuang (楊世光), Wang Yao-li (王堯力) and Mei Feng (梅峰), according to a list released by the commission.
The candidates must pay a NT$1 million (US$32,258) deposit and have until Nov. 2 to collect 280,384 valid petition signatures in support of their bid — 1.5 percent of the electorate as counted in the 2016 legislative elections, the commission said.
The petitions must be submitted in print, as the commission does not accept petition signatures collected in electronic form, it added.
If a candidate fails to reach half the required amount of signatures, they would lose their deposit, the commission said.
Lu on Tuesday announced that she would run in January’s election as an independent.
Lu served as vice president from 2000 to 2008, and in May last year left the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Huang Tuo-yu said that he is the first monk to register as a presidential candidate.
The former expatriate in South Korea said that he is determined to create another economic miracle for Taiwan.
Lan is a former convict who served 19 years in prison for a high-profile double homicide committed in 1981, when he was 17 years old.
Lan first registered to run for the presidency in 2011 after his release from jail, but his application was rejected.
He launched another signature drive in 2015, but was unable to collect enough signatures and lost his deposit.
Tseng, a judicial reform advocate who has represented the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and was twice elected a Taichung City councilor before joining the DPP, ran for Penghu County comissioner as an independent in 2009.
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