Election roundup (03/11)

News related to the presidential election:

• The four DPP presidential candidates met with President Chen on Friday to discuss how the party would choose the candidate. As the Taipei Times put it, "Chen Shui-bian's proposal that negotiations be used to pick a presidential candidate failed to persuade Yu Shyi-kun, who insisted a party primary had to be held." A second round of meetings will be held Tuesday.
• Since Yu Shyi-kun is running for president, he has taken leave of his position as DPP chairman. In his place he appointed Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮), a rather hard-headed legislator. This appointment was made without the party's Central Committee's approval and lots of legislators are upset Chai will be in charge for deciding who will run in which legislative districts. Chai also gets along very poorly with New Tide faction people. Rumor has it that dissatisfied DPP members want Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) to run for chairman.
  
• Wang Jin-pyng has said that if Ma Ying-jeou and him are to run on the same ticket, it should obviously be a Wang-Ma ticket. Ma had said before hand that "listening to the public" made it obvious who should be who's VP, but he's too embarrassed to spell it out (implying it should be a Ma-Wang ticket). This is going to be tough to deal with, and I'm not convinced the problem can be negotiated successfully.
  
• Honorary chairman Lien Chan is reportedly not happy with the performance of acting chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), saying he was not acting impartially enough (favoring Ma) and seemed not to be unconcerned enough with party unity ahead of the election.
• Chairperson candidate Hong Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) faces an uphill battle trying to get enough signatures to run for the chair. She needs 30,000 valid signatures from KMT members. That should be time consuming and costly.
  

And now for news about the legislative election:

• Since nobody is willing to run for Kaohsiung City District 1, the party will not open it for registration and will instead pick a candidate themselves. The party is trying to find a "gutsy" candidate to put up.
• Taekwondo star and legislator Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄) has expressed his plans to run for reelection for Taipei County Disrict 5 (樹林市、鶯歌鎮、新莊市Ⅱ).
  
• Former premier Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) has expressed his interest in running as a legislator without saying what district he wanted.