Eric Chu Cancels Leave of Absence as KMT Chairman / Glad to See Hung's Support Growing

 Eric Chu Cancels Leave of Absence as KMT Chairman / Glad to See Hung's Support Growing

Source: All Taipei Newspapers

June 04 2015

KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) stated yesterday that the party's 2016 KMT Presidential candidate would be finalized during the Central Standing Committee (CSC) meeting scheduled for June 17. Yesterday, Chu also decided to cancel his leave of absence as KMT chairman, so he would preside over the June 17 CSC meeting. He reportedly does not have a pre-set stance on the matter.   

 On May 31, KMT Chairman Eric Chu announced that because he would be interpellated in the New Taipei City Council until June 17, he would take three weeks off, absenting himself from three weekly sessions of the CSC starting from June 3. However, on June 3, the KMT issued a press release stating that the KMT party caucus in the New Taipei City Council had decided to submit questions of interpellation in writing instead, so Chu would be available to preside over the CSC meeting on June 17.    

 Eric Chu stated that the KMT decided to conduct public opinion polls asking two sets of questions, i.e. whether the respondents support Hung and whether the respondents support Hung in a race against the DPP's Tsai. The support ratings from the two questions would be weighted at 15% and 85%, respectively. According to the current schedule, the KMT would hold the opinion polls on June 12 and 13, and release their results of on June 14. The KMT CSC would nominate a Presidential candidate on June 17, with the approval of the National Party Congress, held annually, now scheduled for July 19.  

 Eric Chu went on to say that the party respected Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu's (洪秀柱) views with regard to the method and timing of the opinion polls, as well as her desire to hold a policy presentation, however, Chu added, the existing rules should be abided by. Chu explained further that in the past, when the party conducted primary opinion polls to choose candidates for legislators or county executives, the polls also  asked two sets of similar questions, weighted at 15% vs. 85%, so this was the principle.

 According to an opinion poll conducted by the Taipei-based WantWant Chinatimes Polling center on June 2, Chu lagged behind the DPP's Tsai Ing-wen by 10 percentage points (33.6% vs. 23.3%), whereas Hung only lagged behind Tsai by 4.1 percentage points. Chu stated that it was good for the KMT that Hung's support rating continued to climb, adding that he was glad to see Hung receive more recognition.    

 Some within the KMT party continue to hope the party central would draft an A-list member to run in the race. According to another opinion poll conducted on June 3 by the same Polling center, when Legislative Speaker Wang Jyn-ping was pitted against the DPP's Tsai, he lagged behind her by 2.9 percentage points, so Wang is leading others in the KMT so far.

  According to the survey, although Wang decided not to throw his hat into the ring, 26.6% of the respondents said that they supported Wang to run in the race, only 2.9 percentage points behind Tsai Ing-wen's 29.5%. However, 41.7% respondents declined to answer the question.   

 The latest poll was conducted on June 3 with 773 people successfully surveyed. The margin of error associated with this sampling is plus or minus 3.5 % with a 95 % confidence interval.

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