Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday issued a “general mobilization order” to all of the party’s staff and elected officials, as she prepared to launch a week-long nationwide campaign tour starting today.
The trip is to start from Fenggang Village (楓港) in Pingtung County’s Fangshan Township (枋山), where her family is from.
From there, she is to work her way around the nation with parades and rallies.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Tsai is to arrive in New Taipei City on Friday next week, the day before the election, and she is to have a rally in Banciao District (板橋) before moving on to Taipei to stage an election-eve rally on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office Building.
Separately yesterday, former Presidential Office secretary-general Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭), who is a Hakka from Miaoli County, said that although Hakka communities in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli are traditionally considered Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) strongholds, she is confident they would turn their support to Tsai in the presidential election.
Yeh, who is also head of Tsai’s Hakka Supporters’ Club, made the remarks at a press conference at Tsai’s national campaign headquarters in Taipei, accompanied by dozens of representatives of overseas Hakka organizations who have traveled to Taiwan to show their support for Tsai and to help organize campaign events.
“In the past, Hakka in the south have been more supportive of the DPP, while those living in the north, mainly Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli, have been more supportive of the KMT,” Yeh said. “However, this time, things have changed, as Hakka people in the north are also more enthusiastic — to an extent that surprised me — at Tsai’s campaign rallies.”
“The outcome will become apparent in eight days; I am confident it will happen,” she added.
Yeh said that in the past, Hakka were more or less an “invisible” ethnic group, but during the DPP administration from 2000 to 2008, the government pushed for the founding of Hakka TV, the Hakka Affairs Council and institutes for Hakka studies at universities.
“Hakka people have since been more proud to identify themselves as Hakka,” Yeh said.
Despite all the efforts to promote and preserve Hakka culture and identity, the DPP’s support in the three cities and counties with Hakka dominance still rarely goes beyond 40 percent, but there is hope for change this time, Yeh said.
DPP Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said that in addition to giving its full support to Tsai, the party would like to urge supporters to cast their votes for DPP district and legislator-at-large candidates.
“The KMT proposed to have the majority party form the Cabinet after the legislative elections,” Wu said. “This shows that it still has the ambition to seize the executive power by winning a legislative majority.”
“That’s why we need all of our legislative candidates to win,” he said.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS