Kuomintang mayoral candidate Sean Lien plays 'sympathy card' after trailing in election polls
He releases TV advert, showing his wife, Patty Tsai, tearfully recalling when he was shot and wounded by a gunman four years ago while campaigning on behalf of another party member
Seventy-two hours before the mayoral election in Taipei, Kuomintang candidate Sean Lien Sheng-wen – who has been trailing in opinion polls – played the family and sympathy card to remind the voters in the party’s traditional stronghold of his brush with death four years ago on the eve of a council election.
Lien, 44, released a three-minute television campaign advert today, showing his wife, Patty Tsai Yi-shan, tearfully recalling the shooting, which she said had been so upsetting she “could not even mention” it during the past four years.
A tearful Tsai recalls in the advert that before he slipped into a deep coma, “[Lien said] ‘I’ll always love you’. And he hung up the phone. I called back immediately, but the number was disconnected.”
Tsai told local media that filming the advert, in which she broke her silence over the shooting had been “cathartic and healing” for her.
The release of the advert coincided with the fourth anniversary of the incident. On November 26 2010, Lien was shot in the face at close range during a campaign rally in New Taipei City for a fellow KMT city council candidate.
The bullet killed a bystander after first hitting Lien’s left cheek and exiting near his right temple.
Lien, who has recovered from the wounds, has insisted that he was the target of the gunman, who he said was “politically motivated”.