Shannon Brandao
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"China Watcher, Politico [excerpt]: It’s been a rough week in Taiwanese #politics. Three Beijing-friendly politicians failed to join a coalition ticket and two of them ended up running for the January presidential #election together, against the ticket led by William Lai, whom Beijing derides as a representative of Taiwanese independence.
The drama unfolded late last week, when #Foxconn boss Terry Gou called for a meeting with Kuomintang candidate Hou Yu-ih and Ko Wen-je, who represents the self-declared centrist #Taiwan People’s Party, But instead of a moment of solidarity, the press conference, which took place at a five-star hotel in Taipei, descended into disarray, with Hou and Ko both refusing to back down and become the other’s vice-presidential candidate.
At the end: Gou, whose lucrative #iPhone-building business was briefly threatened with investigations by Beijing after he declared his candidacy, dropped out of the race. Hou and Ko are now both formal candidates but it remains to be seen whether either one of them will informally withdraw before the January 13 election, encouraging his supporters to vote for the other candidate.
Despite the fiasco: Ko, a former Taipei mayor, remains very popular among the young #voters, many of whom prefer neither the Kuomintang nor Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party, which they complained was unable to improve Taiwan economically.
According to the latest poll: Ko secured 31.9 percent of support, surpassing Lai (29.2 percent), who’s been Taiwan’s vice-president for the last four years. Hou came last at 23.6 percent, though a decisive 15.3 percent say they’re undecided or unsure, according to the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation.
And that’s against initial expectations: Diplomats told #China Watcher that they were initially expecting Ko’s popularity to drop following the press conference, as he aligned himself as a member of the pro-China camp, instead of the middle-of-the-road image he previously focused on. This is particularly a challenge for Lai and his newly-declared vice-president pick, Bi-khim Hsiao, who until a week ago was Taiwan’s ambassador to Washington.
FOR NOW, BEIJING TAKES AIM AT THE BIGGEST [ENEMY]. 'Taiwan independence means war,' said Chen Binhua, the spokesman of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office. 'Lai and Hsiao formed a combination of independentists … The general Taiwanese people should be clearly aware of the fact that those who work for Taiwanese independence are trouble-makers and war-makers.'”
#news #geopolitics