Ex-Taipei deputy mayor tops TPP legislator-at-large list

Taipei, Nov. 22 (CNA) The Taiwan People's Party (TPP) on Thursday released its legislator-at-large nominees for the January 2024 elections, with former Taipei Deputy Mayor Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) topping the 34-person list.

Under Taiwan's electoral system, the number of legislator-at-large seats is prorated according to the number of "party votes" each party receives in the Jan. 13 elections, with the threshold set at 5 percent of all party votes cast.

Each party is entitled to submit a ranked list of 34 nominees for 34 at-large seats in the 113-seat Legislature, which also includes 73 seats elected from single-member legislative constituencies and six seats reserved for Indigenous candidates.

At the news conference Thursday, TPP presidential nominee Ko Wen-je(柯文哲) said Huang, who served as his deputy during his time as mayor of Taipei and failed in a bid to succeed him in last year, was an efficient worker.

Meanwhile, Ko praised the TPP's no. 2 pick Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), a former New Power Party (NPP) legislator, for his work uncovering corruption while serving as a lawmaker.

Last week, Huang Kuo-chang resigned from the NPP, which he co-founded in 2015 and chaired from its inception to March 2019. The party emerged from the 2014 Sunflower movement, a student-led protest against a cross-strait service trade agreement being negotiated under the then Kuomintang (KMT) government and China.

Surrogacy advocate Chen Chao-tzu (陳昭姿) was listed third.

There had been reports that China-born Xu Chunying (徐春鶯), who gained Taiwanese citizenship in 2000, would appear on the list, but she declined the nomination. Despite this, another Chinese spouse, Li Zhenxiu (李貞秀), is ranked in 15th place.

In response to media reports that Terry Gou (郭台銘), an independent presidential aspirant, was offered the top position on the list, as Ko has been attempting to unify opposition forces behind a joint presidential ticket, Ko said he made the offer but it was declined.