Candidate's daughter prefers medicine

Chen Ching-huei, nevertheless, vowed to be a solid campaigner for her mother, who has been nominated as the ruling party's candidate in the Kaohsiung municipality mayoral race slated for Nov. 27.

Speaking at a press conference to launch a campaign publicity video of Huang's titled “The Iron Carnation,” Chen said she was invited by KMT Secretary-General King Pu-tsung to speak in the video about her relationship with her mother.

“It was at that point that I came to the realization that mother had been a stranger to me, since I had seldom met her since childhood,” Chen said.

Chen said she was brought up in Taipei City by her grandmother and grandfather. Her grandfather was Huang Tsun-chiu, a former president of the Control Yuan who passed away in 2000.

“I remember once I asked my granddad to take me to mother's office after I saw a giant billboard in Taipei depicting a woman candidate campaigning, who I thought was my mother,” Chen recalled.

“I cried when I was told by granddad that the woman was not my mother because she was running in Kaohsiung,” Chen continued.

Chen said it was only after she had grown up that she realized how hard it was for her mother to be a politician, spending so much time away from home and never enjoying the happiness of family life.

“Mother has given the prime of her life over the past 30 years to politics,” the ob-gyn doctor said.

Huang will run against the opposition Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP's) official nominee, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu, and former DPP heavyweight Yang Chiu-hsing in a three-way race. Yang quit the DPP recently to run as an independent.

Initial polls show Huang and Yang trailing Chen by a wide margin in the three-way race.

Chen said she has filed for a temporary leave of absence from her work in the months of the run-up to the election so that she can serve as a doctor on Huang's campaign team.

“I will be back in my doctor's white coat as soon as the election is over,” she added.

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