Kuo Tien-Tsai, vice president of Diwan University and a former legislator, will represent the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) in Nov. 27 mayoral elections in the Tainan City municipality, KMT Secretary-General King Pu-tsung announced Tuesday. Kuo's nomination was announced at a news conference in which King announced the list of the KMT nominees who will run in the year-end mayoral elections in the five special municipalities -- Taipei City, Xinbei City, Taichung City (a merger of Taichung City and Taichung County) , Kaohsiung City (a merger of Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County) and Tainan City (a merger of Tainan City and Tainan County). The list was to be referred to the KMT's Central Standing Committee (CSC) the following day for approval, King said, noting that the nomination process will be completed only when the CSC has given its green light. The KMT's selection of Kuo, the final name disclosed by the KMT, meant that Lee Chuan-chiao, a former legislator and a major KMT rival who had made clear his intention of vying for the Tainan City mayor post since early this year, had agreed to quit the competition with Kuo. It was already widely known that Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin and Vice Premier Eric Liluan Chu will be fielded by the KMT in Taipei City and Xinbei City, respectively, in the coming elections, while Taichung Mayor Jason Hu and Legislator Huang Chao-shun are the party's hopefuls for the Taichung City and Kaohsiung City races. Kuo said, meanwhile, that he will quit all his teaching jobs in order to prepare fully for the Tainan race, predicted to be an extremely tough battle for the KMT in an area where the opposition Democratic Progressive Party enjoys firm support and where it has governed for at least two decades. Kuo expressed optimism about the KMT's grassroots consolidation of his candidacy following party mediation that settled the issue of who should be chosen to run. 