The China Post
Date: September 6, 2017
By: The China Post with Business Today

“My son, do you really need to go on doing this? Why don’t you come back and be a

Lai has always been brave to take the burden, now he has a chance to realize his idea of “being a great doctor that heal a nation”. However, facing the complex national affairs, what will Lai achieve?

doctor?” That’s William Lai’s mother Lai Tung Hau put to the future Tainan Mayor and premier in 2004. In July that year, William Lai, who was the chief secretary of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislative Yuan Caucus, was beaten by a group of gangsters after Lai chided them for riding on the wrong side of the road.

Lai’s mother took care of Lai at the hospital and tried to convince him to leave politics and return to his former profession as a physician. But William Lai said instead: “As long as the society needs me and supports me with voters, I will just have to go on.”

Lai had twice been considered for a Cabinet position. In 2000, Chen Shui-bian was elected president and he planned to have Lai take over as Vice Minister of the Department of Health (now Ministry of Health and Welfare) and to be promoted to minister later; In 2007, Chang Chun-hsiung reprised as the premier and invited Lai to be as secretary-general, but Lai was dedicated to his lawmaker election campaign.
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