TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The three presidential rivals were preparing their final live televised debate to be broadcast Saturday, reports said.
Kuomintang candidate President Ma Ying-jeou, Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen and People First Party Chairman James Soong first met each other at a similar debate on December 3. One week later, their running mates confronted each other.
The final debate before polling day on January 14 will follow a different formula, with representatives of 12 different social action groups putting questions about their own specialist subjects to the three candidates. The topics will range from health reform, agriculture and education to women’s rights, taxation and labor rights.
One of the people chosen to ask a question is Yang Ju-men, a man once known as the ‘rice bomber.’ After Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization in 2002, he planted 17 bombs in parks, restrooms and telephone booths around Taipei. Only two exploded, and nobody was injured. Yang was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison but was released after only two years.
On the side of the candidates, DPP campaign officials reportedly feared for Tsai’s performance because she had a cold and found it difficult to speak, reports said Friday. She was already hoarse when she participated in a discussion about her cultural policies on Thursday afternoon, and her speech grew increasingly difficult at a rally in a park later that evening, aides said.
She was present at a first rehearsal with campaign staff at the DPP headquarters, but didn’t speak in order to save her voice for Saturday, reports said.
Aides said most of the questions at the debate would be targeted at Ma because he represented the government. Tsai would try to join in the criticism of the president, they said.
Ma was rehearsing the debate on Friday morning, but aides estimated that preparing was hard because it was difficult to tell which kind of questions the activists would ask.
The Ma campaign expected that both Tsai and Soong would band together and launch fiercer attacks than before on the president, turning the debate into a two-against-one affair. Soong had been described as the outsider after the first debate, which meant he would likely change his strategy and be tougher on Ma, reports quoted presidential campaign staff as saying.
The PFP chairman had no public events planned for Friday because he wanted to study the social groups asking questions at the debate, reports said.
Recent opinion polls have shown Ma and Tsai level with each other at around 40 percent each, with Soong trailing a distant third at around 10 percent.
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