KMT Candidates for year end mayoral elections finalized

Liberty Times via Taiwan Today:

With the announcement May 11 that former legislator Kuo Tien-tsai will be its candidate for mayor of Tainan, the ruling Kuomintang has completed its list of nominees for Taiwan’s year-end special municipality elections.

Pending official approval by the party’s Central Standing Committee May 12, the mayoral candidates will be incumbent Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin in Taipei City, Vice Premier Eric Li-luan Chu in New Taipei City, current Taichung Mayor Jason Hu in Taichung City, Kuo in Tainan City and Legislator Huang Chao-shun in Kaohsiung City.

The elections are scheduled for Nov. 27 in Taipei City, New Taipei City, which was upgraded from Taipei County, and Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung cities, which were created by merging their respective cities and counties.

It is far too early to prognosticate; only the Taichung election for the new Taichung Municipality, created out of the county-city merger, seems set in stone. There the KMT's Jason Hu, the current popular mayor, enjoys the advantages of both incumbency and high ratings and will likely win easily. Mayor Hau will likely enjoy a tough fight with the DPP's Su Tseng-chang in Taipei, while in Taipei County, the DPP candidate is not yet clear. The KMT reports:

Five special municipality mayoral elections are slated to be held at the end of this year. However, the DPP is facing a dilemma as to who should be drafted as the party’s candidate to run in the Taichung Mayoral Election.

Although DPP Secretary-General Su Jia-chyuan has no background in the greater Taichung area, he is regarded as a dark horse by the DPP party central as his support rate in the poll equaled that of his comrade opponent Lin Chia-lung, who has nurtured his relations with the locals for many years.

Lin resigned from his post as Government Information Office director under the Chen Shui-bian administration in March 2005 to run in the Taichung City Mayoral Election, but lost to incumbent Mayor Jason Hu of the KMT in December 2005.

Whether or not the DPP could complete the nomination process for the year-end Five Municipalities Mayoral Elections by May 19 has caught media’s attention recently as the ruling KMT has already announced its lineup for the elections. It was reported that the DPP Nomination Committee today would hold a meeting to discuss matters related to the nomination of a candidate for Taichung City. If no decision is made in today’s meeting, the DPP would only officially announce their tickets for Kaohsiung City and Tainan City.

In order to resolve problems related to the nomination of a candidate for the Taichung City Mayoral Election, the DPP party central conducted a final three-day poll yesterday of its four hopefuls, i.e., Su Jia-chyuan, Lin Chia-lung, former DPP Taichung County councilor Guo Jun-ming, and former DPP legislator Chiu Tai-san, so as to decide the best candidate for the DPP.

The election is in November. Stay tuned!
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