Chen reaches out to nation's youth

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will meet with college students on Youth Day in an effort to boost support among young people ahead of next year's presidential election, a party official said yesterday.

Youth Day is tomorrow.

Director of the party's youth development department Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said the president will not talk about politics during these meetings; rather he will focus on subjects that the group is concerned about, such as Chen's life experiences and how he coped with problems at school or in relationships.

Luo said college students are more concerned about personal issues than politics.

The director said that those who are eligible to vote for the first time next year, around 1.5 million, are going to be crucial in the upcoming election.

A survey released by the party yesterday indicates that the DPP is still the most popular party among people aged between 20 and 40. The youth policies presented by the DPP are more in line with their needs compared with those of the KMT and PFP, according to the survey.

Luo said the DPP's desire for reform and its social image explain why the party is more popular among young people, adding that the party needs to insist on reform with an effort to win the trust of this demographic.

But the party also got a warning in the survey, which showed its popularity among the group aged 35 to 40 has declined since the 2000 presidential election.

The DPP obtained 22.7 percent support from this group, whereas the KMT received 25.3 percent, the study said.

Luo said the party will heed the warning and will try to win back support from this group through a strong administrative performance because "slogans are not enough for this group."

He said people in their late 30s now have more working experience and, as a result, have higher expectations about how politics can serve people.

In an e-mail released yesterday, Chen wished young people a happy Youth Day.

Chen encouraged young people to enjoy their lives by developing interesting hobbies such as reading cartoon books or playing electronic games. Chen urged people to excel in what they do and recalled his meetings with cartoonists in Taiwan. He pointed to Tseng Jeng-cheng (曾政承), who won a gold medal at a cyber-game competition in 2001, as an example of a young person who excels at what he does.

Chen said it is an outdated impression that only ill-mannered children enjoy reading cartoon books or playing electronic games, adding that "developing curiosity or a keen interest in learning is even more important than studying."