The coal miner’s son wins power in Taiwan
TAIPEI: Pugnacious, stubborn and a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan’s independence”, veteran politician Lai Ching-te will step into the international spotlight as the democratic island’s next president. The 64-year-old Harvard graduate rode to victory in Saturday’s election on the promise that he would defend Taiwan’s democracy. His win delivers an unprecedented third consecutive term for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and in his victory speech Lai hailed it as a “victory for the community of democracies”.
“We are telling the international community that between democracy and authoritarianism, we will stand on the side of democracy,” he said. He has vowed to continue outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen’s policies of building up Taiwan’s military capabilities as a defense deterrence.
Unlike most of Taiwan’s political elite, Lai rose from humble origins. Born in 1959, Lai was raised by his mother alongside five other siblings in a rural hamlet in New Taipei City, after his coal miner father died when he was a toddler. After he graduated from Harvard University, he returned to work in a hospital in southern Taiwan before turning his attention to politics in 1996 during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. “I decided I had a duty to participate in Taiwan’s democracy and help protect this fledgling experiment from those who wished it harm.” He served as a lawmaker, a mayor of the southern city of Tainan and a premier before he was tapped to be vice president to President Tsai Ing-wen, whom he will now succeed. Under Tsai’s twoterm tenure relations with China plummeted—with all high-level communications cut off—as she defended the island’s sovereignty and refused to acknowledge Beijing’s claim over it.-AFP