Vice President Lai Ching-te, also known as William Lai, has won almost 41% of the vote for the next president of Taiwan.
According to the Taipei Times, as of 7:40 p.m. on January 13, Taiwan time, with 87% of polling locations having reported, Lai was “still comfortably in the lead with 40.73% of the vote. Hou has 33.27% and Ko has 26.01%, according to the official CEC [Central Election Commission] tally.”
Only Lai’s party, the Democratic Progressive Party, and those of his two major-party opponents, the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People’s Party, won enough votes to “appoint legislators-at-large. The DPP is ahead with 36.54%, with the KMT close behind with 34.46% and the TPP at 21.84%. At only 2.54%, the NPP [New Power Party] looks like it will lose its three current seats.”
As of 8 p.m. Taiwan time, both the Kuomintang presidential candidate, Hou You-yi, and the Taiwan People’s Party candidate, Ko Wen-je, have conceded defeat. A plurality is sufficient to determine the election; there is no runoff.
Associated Press reports (“Ruling-party candidate emerges victorious in Taiwan’s presidential election,” January 13, 2024):
China had called the poll a choice between war and peace. Beijing strongly opposes Lai, the current vice president and a member of the governing Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP.
Lai and incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen reject China’s sovereignty claims over Taiwan….
For Tony Chen, a 74-year-old retiree who voted in Taipei in the hour before the polls closed, the election boiled down to a choice between communism and democracy.
Before the outcome was known, Chen had said: “I hope democracy wins.”
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: “Lai Ching-te: ‘We cannot be delusional’ ”
“We have ideals about peace, but we cannot be delusional. Accepting China’s One-China Principle is not real peace. Peace without sovereignty, as in Hong Kong, is a false peace. Therefore, our stance is to build a power of deterrence.”
StopTheChinazis.org: “Video: Why Should Americans Defend Taiwan?”
“We had one [U.S.] presidential candidate who suggested that we should just defend Taiwan until we get computer-chip independence…. But I don’t like the idea of going to war for computer chips any more than I like the idea of going to war for oil…. [Taiwan] is arguably now the freest, most democratic country in Asia.”
