TOO MANY CHOICES:DPP spokesman Lin Chun-hsien said using a mechanism to decide on one candidate among the pan-green aspirants was ‘inevitable’
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday decided to launch a mechanism to seek integration between its four Taipei mayoral aspirants and a pair of independents, so that the pan-green camp would have the best chance of winning in November.
The independents are National Taiwan University Hospital physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and writer Neil Peng (馮光遠).
“We have concluded that the mechanism would be established in Taipei and such mechanism would be inevitable because our supporters long for a victory that would unseat the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] in the capital,” DDP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said after a meeting of the party’s task force for the seven-in-one municipal elections.
While details of the mechanism still have to be decided, probably in a second meeting of the task force, it is certain that the final candidate will be decided by a poll, or two polls, between the four DPP members, Ko and Peng, Lin said.
The DPP’s hopefuls are former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), attorney Wellington Koo (顧立雄) and legislators Pasuya Yao (姚文智) and Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財).
It is not known if all six have accepted the idea of using the DPP’s mechanism.
If such a mechanism was established and Ko — who has been leading his pan-green camp rivals in recent media surveys, finished with the best results in the DPP’s poll — the DPP reportedly would not nominate its own candidate for the Taipei race.