No squeezing Wang: Ma rejects pressure talk

FEUD? Although President Ma Ying-jeou is interested in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential race, he respects the party’s primary, Ma’s spokesman said

Staff writer, with CNA





President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) rejected a report that he used a third party to force a candidate to withdraw from the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) primary for next year’s presidential race, Presidential Office spokesperson Charles Chen (陳以信) said yesterday.

The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister paper of the Taipei Times) reported that Ma demanded that Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) withdraw from the presidential primary through a Presidential Office deputy secretary-general “in private.”

Ma rejected what he called “speculation” and asked reporters to verify their stories before publishing rumors and conjecture as news, Chen said.

The Liberty Times article is the latest in a string of reports suggesting that Ma, who resigned as KMT chairman in November last year after the party’s defeats in the Nov. 29 nine-in-one local elections, has tried to intervene in the party’s presidential primary to scuttle Wang’s presidential bid.

Ma and Wang are said to have had strained relations for years.

A day before the deadline for party members to register for the presidential primary on Saturday, Wang said that he would not seek the KMT nomination.

Asked whether Ma last year sought to pressure now-KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), who is also mayor of New Taipei City and has repeatedly said he would serve out his mayoral term, to stand in the presidential election, Chen said: “No such thing ever happened.”

Despite Ma’s obvious interest in who is to represent the KMT in the presidential election, Ma has the utmost respect for the party primary system, Chen said.

Polls indicate that Chu and Wang are the KMT’s most popular candidates to run against the Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).

Only Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), former minister of health Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) and political novice Huang Po-shou (黃柏壽) have picked up registration forms.

Candidates could register for the KMT primary yesterday and today. A national party convention is to formally pick the nominee on July 19.