New Taipei mayor sole candidate for KMT leader
Print Edition
TAIWAN’S ruling Kuomintang party, reeling from its worst local election setback yet, will have just one candidate for its new leader, a party official said yesterday.
When nominations closed on Saturday only Eric Chu, mayor of New Taipei City, had completed the required candidacy procedures.
Chu also needs more than 10,000 endorsements from party members by December 21, before the KMT elects a new chairman on January 17.
Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou stepped down as KMT chairman earlier this month to shoulder responsibility for the party’s massive defeat in November’s local elections.
Ma will retain his government post until 2016 when he must step down after serving two terms, but observers say his influence within the party will now be severely diminished. The KMT lost five of Taiwan’s six large municipalities — the most hotly contested seats — in the local elections. New Taipei, a newly created municipality which surrounds the island’s capital, was the only one it retained.
“For the future of Taiwan’s democracy, I cannot just walk away in the darkest moment of the Kuomintang. I must stand for election for the party’s next chairman,” Chu said on his Facebook page.
But the 53-year-old promised to complete his four-year term as New Taipei mayor.
Chu, a rising political star in the KMT, edged out his DPP rival by only a narrow margin, in stark contrast to various surveys before the vote that had shown him with a comfortable lead.
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