The DPP's Taipei mayoral candidate Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) yesterday announced his educational white paper. He used the occasion to reiterate his opposition to a return to the practice of staging joint college entrance exams.
"The [old-style] joint exams had received a lot of criticism over the past few decades. We cannot go back on [the road of] educational reform," said Lee at a press conference held to announce his educational policies.
Lee's remarks yesterday came in apparent contradiction to the educational policies advocated by his opponent, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
On Friday, Ma announced his educational white paper, proposing to merge the old-style practice of joint exams into the current Diversified Enrollment Scheme (多元入學方案).
"Such an education policy [proposed by Ma] would only make the whole education matter even more complicated," said Lee, criticizing Ma for failing to deliver on his education policy campaign promises made four years ago. Ma promised to increase the city's education budget and fully subsidize private high schools' non-tuition expenses.
Lee pledged to strengthen the curriculum on local culture and mother tongues, simplify the high-school enrollment process and give free lunches to elementary school students who subscribe to the school lunch program.
Aside from announcing Lee's education policies, his team yesterday also launched a new TV commercial that is aimed at Taipei's Hakka community.
Later yesterday afternoon, Lee also took part in a three-hour street procession with President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) who shared an open-topped jeep with Lee, asking voters to support Lee's mayoral bid. The campaign team drove through the city's Wanhua, Wenshan, Da-an and Chungcheng districts.
The street procession marked the third weekend in a row that Chen took part in events promoting Lee's candidacy.
According to Peng Tien-haw (彭天豪), a spokesperson for Lee's campaign, Chen will not share the same stage with Lee again until the last week before the Dec. 7 election.
According to his team, Lee decided to cancel his original evening plan to visit nightmarkets and meet voters in a bid to prepare for today's debate.
Ma's camp cancelled the campaign activities that he was scheduled to attend last night after a city councilor was shot to death in a Taipei restaurant.
His team says he decided he would rather stay in close contact with police officers investigating the crime.
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