In this episode of Perspectives with Neilo, we bring you Part 2 in our mini series on Taiwan's 2024 Presidential Election and we focus on the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (民進黨) and their candidate, William Lai or Lai Ching-te (賴清德)
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) were founded in 1986 a year before the end of martial law. They are one of the two major political parties in Taiwan, the other being the Kuomintang (KMT). We will focus on the KMT's presidential candidate in the next episode.
The DPP has traditionally been associated with economic innovation, safeguarding human rights as well as promotion of Taiwanese nationalism and identity. Their insistence that Taiwan is a de facto sovereign state infuriates China.
The incumbent DPP president, Tsai Ing-wen, is the country's first female president and was re-elected for a second term in January 2022 with a historic 8 million plus votes, the largest number of votes for a presidential candidate in the country's era of direct presidential elections.
Presidential candidates in Taiwan are not allowed to run for a third term, so current Vice President William Lai has been unanimously selected by the DPP as the party's 2024 presidential candidate.
Our guest in this episode is Vincent Chao (@vyctw). He is the Director of International Affairs for the DPP as well as a Taipei City Councilor and Spokesperson for William Lai's campaign. We met him on November 14th to talk about William Lai's background, his policies on energy, foreign relations and much more.
