With the presidential and parliamentary elections in less than two weeks, a Taiwanese rights alliance has advised gay-friendly voters to support the opposition leader Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party.

After reviewing candidates and parties’ stances on gay and non-traditional family rights, the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights said yesterday that it does not recommend people to give their votes on 14 January to the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou from the Chinese Nationalist Party, or the remaining candidate James Soong.

Fan Yun, a director at one of the five member groups of the Alliance, noted candidates are neck and neck in different polls and urged gay-friendly people such as first-time voters to make the most of their ballots.

‘A survey by the Common Wealth magazine in November found that 66.9% of adolescents support the legalization of gay marriage,’ Fan said. ‘They are the most supportive age group.’

Taiwan is widely considered to be the most progressive region in Greater China for sexual rights.

But the Alliance noted that Soong has repeatedly ignored its request both in writing and by phone for comments on gay partnership or marriage legislation, signalling his lack of interest in gay rights.

Meantime, Ma said he is awaiting the completion of relevant research for ‘further careful evaluation’, which the alliance regards as disappointing and stalling a major policy initiative.

Tsai of the DPP, once insinuated to be a lesbian by an opponent, was the only candidate to have formally promised to launch relevant bills to support partnership rights, but stopped short of supporting gay marriage.

For the parliament, the Alliance pointed out quite a number of DPP lawmakers have expressed their support for both gay partnership and marriage rights, while the Green Party Taiwan, which currently has no legislator, has even made it a party stance to support such rights.

Many pollsters have already released their last results, in accordance with the election regulation, but their numbers were varied.

The pro-Chinese Nationalist Party media suggested that Ma led Tsai by three to eight percentage points, but some analysts believe any lead smaller than 10 percentage points reflects the Party’s precarious standing, given methodology biases.

National Chengchi University’s Center for Prediction Markets, whose figures tended to be more accurate, predicted Tsai would get 49.8% of the votes and Ma 42.6%.