Vice President and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate William Lai (賴清德) and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday panned a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) coalition as a blatant power grab that fails to consider the interests of the public and the nation.
Tsai said it was unreasonable that the opposition party was calling to unseat the DPP when Taiwan has gained increased recognition in the international community under its leadership.
“Our opponents are still fighting over who would be president. They lack a unified vision on policy” and what they could do for the country, Tsai said.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsun, Taipei Times
“This isn’t a coalition, this is a divvying up of [political] spoils,” she said at a campaign event in Chiayi County.
Tsai said that without a policy consensus, the two opposition parties would be focused on each other instead of the country, and this would fail to win the international community’s trust.
Lai said that TPP Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) had once said he would return the country to the people, but “it is evident that he was returning the government and country to the KMT” by collaborating with the KMT for a joint ticket.
Lai also said Ko has “betrayed his own vision,” referring to Ko’s claims that he represented a choice that superseded the binary division of the DPP and the KMT.
The attempted KMT-TPP coalition is a blatant power grab that not only tramples on the spirit of democracy but is also dismissive of the public, Lai said.
Lai said that neither the KMT nor the TPP were appealing to mainstream opinion, adding that neither party could present complete policy platforms or demonstrate their suitability to govern.
Separately, independent presidential candidate Terry Gou’s (郭台銘) campaign spokesman Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修) yesterday said that the main factor leading to what seemed to be a failed coalition effort was the KMT’s domineering attitude.
A Ko and Gou coalition would be much more natural, Huang added.
Additional reporting by Wu Liang-yi and Huang Shu-li
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