The 2024 Taiwanese presidential election candidates overview so far
The Taiwanese presidential election talk in the next year(2024) with an Iranian friend as a native Tâioânlâng(Tâigí Taiwanese), mostly about the background of the candidates and their possible platform, he is more interested in the candidate of Lōa(賴, Lāi).
Yes, the election will probably have 3 or 4 candidates for the president of roC (the current ruling government of Taiwan and as I told you before the roC =\= Taiwan issue must be resolved as soon as possible).
Lōa(賴, Lāi) was a doctor, who was the mayor of Tâilâm(台南 Tainan city) for 8 years (the oldest city in Taiwan, actually Taiwan was the old name for this place), the history of he participated the public/political affairs in the Democratic Progressive Party(DDP or Bînchú-chìnpō͘ -tóng-民主進步黨) can date back to 1996 and earlier (the year for Taiwanese to have our own first presidential election of the ruling government), to me, he is trustable from his choices (stand with Taiwanese by challenging the totalitarian regime and what it left on us) and his background as who born from a miner family but I haven’t really read his story in details yet, that is all I can tell.
And we have another 3 or 2 candidates (not decided yet), the main rival of Lōa(賴, Lāi) could be the one who was a high-level police official who stood with the Chinese totalitarian regime for years in the past, Kâu(侯, Hou), and he was the mayor of Sinpak(新北, New Taipei City) for the past 4 years, I will say no more about him since the Chinese party(KMT or Tiongkok-kokbîn-tóng — 中國國民黨) is pretty anti-democracy and human right for more than half of the century, he even took a part in the prosecution of the Taiwanese freedom fighter Tēⁿ Lâmiông(鄭南榕 — Nylon) in 1989, and yes, let’s not count the freedom fighter they(the Chinese totalitarian regime) wrote in 1968 for their "great leader", to whom you may ever Google about Taiwanese freedom fighter.
We also have a doctor candidate, Koa(柯, Ko) who is swinging between Taiwan and China, and was the mayor of Tâipak(台北, Taipei city) for the past 8 years as the success of 318 movement (the social movement emerged from the civil disobedience to against the pro-China policy, hundreds of thousands or millions of Taiwanese had joined the movement), but later people found out that he is hardly trustable by his rhetoric and probably have no courage or the strategy to deal the big and urgent issue in Taiwan (such as he ever do nothing for the Taiwan flag (not roC flag) was forbidden from being use by the audience during one of the world university games (a world sport competition) which held in Tâipak), he is the leader of the new emerge party but using the old name of the social reform group of the Taiwanese who fought for freedom and democracy back to the era of Japanese colonial ruling before WW2— Taiwan People’s Party (TPP or Tâioân-bînchiòng-tóng-台灣民眾黨) with the supporters who is not really that standing on their own ground in my point of view.
Then finally we may have the candidate of the ex-richest entrepreneur in Taiwan, Koeh(郭, Kuo), he is famous for his business making the components of iPhone and which is also famous by exploiting the Chinese labor and some of his workers committed suicide from the factory building, he is definitely more center to China from his rhetoric (and ever talked about using robots to stop the possible invasion from China), but recently his business was moving out from China to India, he said that he would sacrifice for Taiwan for a better future of the economy with his experience and strategy with the high-tech industry, which is the most important industry in Taiwan as he mentioned, but I would not say that he is the only guy for the economy and the industries of Taiwan, there are people capable of working on this as well, and in our time we need the wisdom to stand our own ground as a Taiwanese, we need the solid base of the freedom and the dignity of all to really build the economy upon.
From the general speaking at this moment, Taiwan is in the great danger of not being able to talk about our long-term future formally (as the candidates you can see, splitting between Taiwan and China but not Taiwan or something else focused on the issues), the urge that we got to do something more in our time!