Taiwanese opposition parties remain deadlocked over joint ticket as election deadline looms

The smaller Taiwan People’s Party has rebuffed the latest offer from the Kuomintang on resolving their dispute over how to select the leading candidate

Candidates have until Friday to formally register with the election authorities and the TPP’s candidate Ko Wen-je has pledged to ‘fight to the end’

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The TPP candidate Ko Wen-je has indicated he will fight on if there is no deal with the KMT. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:00pm, 22 Nov 2023

The Taiwan People’s Party has rejected a proposal from the largest opposition party Kuomintang to restart efforts to form a joint ticket in January’s presidential election.

The two mainland-friendly parties have been deadlocked over the method used to pick a candidate to challenge the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s William Lai Ching-te, and the deadline for registering candidates is looming on Friday.

The two parties had agreed to select the candidate who would top the ticket based on an analysis of opinion polls, but talks broke on Saturday over a disagreement about how to interpret those polls.

On Tuesday, Hou Yu-ih, the KMT’s presidential candidate and New Taipei mayor, proposed that the two sides each appoint their own pollsters to compare the polling, but this was rejected by TPP chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je.

“There was no consensus at that time [Saturday] … and what’s the point of having more talks based on the same issue?” Huang Shan-shan, Ko’s campaign manager, told a news conference on Wednesday.

She said if the two sides were to return to the negotiating table, “the focus would be on the establishment of a fair mechanism that can be accepted by supporters of both sides”.