Campaigning for next year’s presidential and legislative elections is heating up, with the nation’s biggest two political parties stepping up efforts to rally their support bases.
Looking toward a second term, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday told a campaign event in Taipei that she hopes to see a high turnout rate and votes for the party on Jan. 11.
“We want to show the world the will, values and choice of the Taiwanese public,” Tsai said, adding that every day until election day is critical and that “everyone should unite and protect Taiwan.”
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
“I do not want to see the public divided because of the election,” she added, calling for people across the political spectrum — regardless of their support for Taiwanese independence, the Republic of China (Taiwan) or others — to set aside their differences.
“Our election should be a process of banding together and showing the world that Taiwan is not only resolved, but also united in defending its sovereignty and democracy,” Tsai said.
Comparing the process of national development to that of building a house, the president asked the crowd to not “change the blueprint in the middle of construction” and appealed for their support for another term in office.
Photo: Yang Chin-cheng, Taipei Times
Separately yesterday, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, embarked on a two-day trip to canvass votes in Tainan, a traditional stronghold of the DPP.
Han told the crowd at a campaign event that Taiwanese have had it rough over the past few years and they should change their fates through their ballots.
Han — who was also stumping for Lee Wu-lung (李武龍), the KMT legislative candidate for Tainan’s Madou District (麻豆) — said that should he and Lee be elected, they would serve the public and not be driven by a desire for power.
Farmers, fishers, workers and other ordinary people constitute the backbone of society, Han said, adding that if they “lead prosperous lives, then everyone in Taiwan would enjoy prosperity.”
Farmers and fishers are not reaping the benefits of their hard work, as their produce and fisheries products have no sales channels, or are being sold at a fraction of their actual worth, he said.
Taiwanese must realize that no political party should be above the public — it should be the other way around, Han said.
People’s support for political parties should not be fixed, but rather given to parties that do well, and those that fail should withdraw, he said.
“The people of Tainan should wake from their dreams,” Han said, adding that if they want a highly efficient government, the promise of economic development, effective educational policies and strong foreign affairs, they should vote for him.
Additional reporting by Yang Chin-cheng
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching