Can Taipei mayoral candidate Dr Ko Wen-je really heal the partisan divide?

Dr Ko Wen-je's remarks at a campaign rally on Sunday had their intended effect on Howard Lai, a 27-year-old market planner.

"I have never felt so moved and I am pretty certain I will not only give my vote to him, but will also ask my friends and relatives to do the same," he said about the 55-year-old political novice, who is running for mayor of Taipei in the weekend's elections.

Ko's political rise has been somewhat of a phenomenon, analysts said, and it could lead to the defeat of not only Ko's major opponent, Sean Lien Sheng-wen, 44, son of the honorary chairman of the ruling Kuomintang party, but also the KMT's loss of power in its long-time capital city stronghold.

Various opinion polls have recently given Ko, who is chairman of the Department of Traumatology at National Taiwan University Hospital, a comfortable lead of at least 13 percentage points over Lien, who has struggled to change his image as the candidate of privilege out of touch with ordinary people.

During Sunday's rally in front of the Taipei City Government complex, tens of thousands of Ko's supporters waved small red flags bearing the words "Hug for Taipei" and shouted "push down the wall" as the surgeon spoke.

Referring to the three decades-old divide between the KMT and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, Ko told the crowd: "Political ideologies of the blue [KMT] and green [DPP] camps have divided our people into pro-unification and pro-independence groups with each camp hating and opposing each other from behind that invisible and icy ideological wall".