People First Party (PFP) Chairman and presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜) yesterday held a livestream event on Facebook as he had breakfast with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) in Taipei.
They were joined by Soong’s campaign spokeswoman Belle Yu (于美人), and Yonglin Foundation chief executive officer Amanda Liu (劉宥彤) and deputy chief executive Evelyn Tsai (蔡沁瑜), who are PFP legislator-at-large nominees. The foundation was established by Gou.
The group engaged in a casual discussion ranging from stories about Gou’s career to the televised presidential debate on Sunday.
Photo: Wu Shu-wei, Taipei Times
In response to media queries about whether the livestream aimed to foster discussion, and prevent Soong and the party being “marginalized,” Yu said the campaign does not need such efforts, adding that Gou and Song had been wanting to meet for some time.
With Soong’s political experience, he knows the “pace that caobao (草包, “country bumpkin,” or literally “straw bag”) and caibao (菜包, “vegetable bun”) are going, but he is unwilling to walk at that pace,” she said.
It is not that Soong “does not understand, but that he hears the sound of drums from farther away, so his pace is different from theirs,” she said.
Critics of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, refer to him as caobao, while President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) critics have given her the nickname caibao, a play on her family name, which is a homophone of the Chinese word for “vegetable.”
Asked for her thoughts on the pan-blue and pan-green camps’ perceived disregard of Soong at the debate, Yu said that she believes there is a group of independent voters who want the nation’s leader to possess the kind of perspective Soong provides.
“So let them make the decision,” she said.
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