would pursue peace through strength. his views have been denounced by china as separatist. his rival is ho yu ih of the rival kuomintang party party. he s mayor, longtime police officer. he says he will restart talks with beijing if elected. the party that traditionally favors closer links with china. the third candidate is ko wen je of the tpp. this is interesting. this is a party he founded just five years ago. and because the former mayor of ta taipei, before politics a surgeon. his focus on likelihood issues, on bread and butter issues like the high cost of living has really struck a chord with the youth vote. we are, of course, also keeping an eye on taiwan s parliament reap elections. remember the yellow ballots being counted and the parties have stressed the need to win a majority so that the president has a clear mandate. but that could be out of reach. now china, of course, is watching proceedings closely.
millions of people across taiwan went to the polls in these critical presidential and parliamentary elections. the ballots, as you see on your screen, are being counted in this famous lie efficient and transparent way. those yellow ballots represent votes for parliament, pink for president. and they are, as you can see, counted by hand. and each vote later are held up and put on public display before being tallied. and the result is due out later this evening. again, in just a few hours from now. the entire world is watching, especially china. i want to show you who is vying to succeed the president. there are three individuals. you have onelai ing te of the dpp,lso ho yu ih of the opposition kmt, the third, k wen je of the taiwan people s party or tpp. to talk about the candidate one by one, first up, the dpp s lai ching te. he is the vice president of taiwan, he says he would maintain the status quo and
at the polling stations and those results get fed in essentially, and due to the transparency of taiwan elections, all the counting is updated, live stream as we speak, so i have a live stream in front of me and i can tell you at the moment when it comes to the presidential race, the incumbent parties candidate from the dpp p is currently in the lead with 3.2 million votes. behind him is the kmt candidate hou yu ih with 2.8 million and in third place ko wen je from the youngest party contesting the presidential elections, he has 2.6 million votes. we are still quite some way away, 19 and a half million voters eligible for voting in a selection so we don t have confirmation just yet but we had some indication of how the numbers are sort of moving at the moment. when we cross now to shaimaa khalil, she is our correspondent down on the ground a that polling station in a temple and she has been watching the
with beijing, but also on the regional dynamics and that tension between those two big powers. if we look at the numbers, i have a feed here in front of me from a local media station. the numbers are coming in incredibly quickly but we can see that william lai currently is in the lead. he is from the democratic progressive party, the incumbent government. behind him is hou yu ih from kuomintang, the main opposition party and the newest candidate ko wen ji is from the taiwan people s party. he is currently in third. all of this tracks as it did with the polling that was done in the lead up to the election. to get some understanding of what these numbers mean, though, let s speak with my guest, professor. thank you forjoining me. i want to get your thoughts on not the order that the candidates seem
that the central election commission says that 86% of polling stations have been counted, have submitted their votes so we know that we are getting quite close to the end before the official results come out. we also know that voter turnout this year is 69%, a bit down on the last election four years ago at 75% and we will be crossing soon to shaimaa khalil our corresponded on the ground at the dpp headquarters where we are expecting the front runner in this election, the front runner in this election, the democratic progressive party s candidate william lai to be making a speech shortly and that is because we are hearing that there have been concession speech is already being happening from the main opposition party, the kuomintang and their presidential candidate hou yu ih. he has conceded the election. before we get to shaimaa khalil, while she gets all set up, i do have a guest with me who can help us understand the context of this and what it means for taiwan going forward. former