00:00Taiwan's opposition parties have jointly nominated former Taipei Deputy Mayor Li Sichuan to run for
00:05new Taipei Mayor. The main opposition Guo Mingdang and the smaller Taiwan People's Party have
00:10agreed to work together in Taiwan's upcoming local elections in late November. Li's nomination was
00:16decided via phone polling. He beat up rival Huang Guochang, who chairs the TPP. Li, a member of the
00:22KMT, will go up against Su Chia Hui from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. New Taipei is
00:28Taiwan's biggest city by population, with over 4 million people living there. For more on Li Sichuan's
00:36nomination and what it means for Taiwan's upcoming elections, Leslie Liao spoke with political
00:41analyst Courtney Donovan-Smith. Who is Li Sichuan? What can you tell us about him? Well, he's a
00:49technocrat. He's not a politician by nature or background. When there's a new mayor just elected
00:56to a top position, for example, Han Guoyu in Kaohsiung and Zhang Wanan in Taipei, they bring him in as
01:04one of the
01:04deputy mayors. He had a lot of qualms about entering the race because, you know, he views himself as, you
01:13know, a more of a civil engineering type. He likes to work on these projects for the city, not out
01:20on the
01:20campaign trail. And of course, that explains his English name, Hammer Li, which he said he prefers
01:26having a hammer in his hand than a microphone. You said that Li Sichuan is a technocrat. Will that
01:32play to his advantage or his disadvantage for this upcoming election? Both. And the reason I say that
01:39is, is that he does have a reputation for competence. And I think that a lot of people appreciate that.
01:46However, his lack of experience campaigning and his lack of experience acting as a politician,
01:53I think could also hurt him too. And recent polls have roughly a tie within the margin of error,
02:01for example, in the, in a recent Formosa poll with Su Chao Hui. So, you know, he has to now
02:09convince
02:10people in New Taipei that he really wants this job. Whereas, of course, the DPP Su has been very
02:17active and she has been going out of her way to really work to communicate with people. And she is
02:23probably the only really bright spot right now on the DPP roster in Northern Taiwan.
02:30Does Li Sichuan's nomination today have any bearing or is it going to change the direction of the New
02:35Taipei Romero race or the elections as a whole? Well, the coalition, I believe the KMT will be
02:41hoping that the TPP will bring in their supporters. And the TPP generally does poorly amongst older
02:49respondents in polling, but they do reasonably well among younger voters. And that's a demographic
02:55that the KMT has really had trouble for many years now attracting. So I do think that the TPP does
03:03bring
03:03some things to the table that can help the KMT in New Taipei and in other areas in the country.
03:09So coming into this nomination and revealing the poll numbers, both the KMT and the TPP said
03:15that they weren't going to publicize the poll numbers, but in the end they did. Why do you
03:20think the organizers decided to flip that decision? I suspect for two reasons. One is that the polling
03:28results suggest that Huang Guocheng didn't lose by as badly or in such an embarrassing manner as I think
03:38a lot of people expected. And on the other hand, both the polls also showed a reasonable margin between
03:47Li as the front runner and Su coming in fairly far behind. There is a big caveat here, and I'd
03:55be very
03:55curious to know what the questions were because the aggregate numbers only added up to a little over 50%.
04:05So there was a huge percentage of people who were either not responding or said,
04:10I don't know, or something to that effect. That was political analyst Courtney Donovan-Smith.
Comments