While Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) is yet to make his final decision on whether to enter the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) primary for next year’s presidential election, Taiwan Brain Trust chairman Wu Rong-i (吳榮義) said that Lai has less support within the party than DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
When the DPP’s Central Standing Committee decided last week that it would bring the nomination process for next year’s presidential election forward, former presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) criticized Tsai, saying she had made the decision so that other competitors would not have sufficient time to prepare.
Koo went on to declare his support for Lai in the presidential race, and said that the Taiwan Brain Trust would make public a poll on support for Lai at a press conference on Wednesday.
However, while results for several aspects of domestic and cross-strait politics were released, there was nothing on Lai’s support rate.
Asked about it during a separate press conference yesterday, Wu promised that the think tank would eventually publicize the poll results for Lai.
“Lai is making his final decision now, so we decided to release the poll result later, to avoid affecting his decisionmaking,” Wu told the media.
However, when further asked if the think tank decided not to publicize the poll result because Lai’s support was falling behind Tsai’s, Wu said: “It’s not possible to have a poll result with Lai winning over Tsai.”
“Tsai has long been preparing for the presidential race, but the news that Lai may also run in the election has just surfaced,” he said.
While both Koo and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) have expressed their support for Lai in the presidential race, Lai declined to comment yesterday, saying that it was not an appropriate time to discuss the issue as the nation mourns over the plane crash.
However, earlier, Lai said that he would announce his final decision on Monday during a book launch.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
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