On television and in newspapers, it would seem Hualien County's voters are surfing a permanent wave of election hysteria. Cheering crowds and flag-waving supporters surge from campaign rally to political speech as Taipei's party heavyweights flock to the east coast to stump for their respective candidates.
Yet step away from campaign headquarters and the organized events and "election fever" is notable only for its absence. Newcomers to this remote part of the country would be forgiven for not knowing a county commissioner by-election is less than three days away.
"Many of us, of course, care about the by-election," said a cafeteria owner surnamed Wang when asked to comment on the county's seemly tepid electoral atmosphere. "But it is, after all, just a by-election and the majority here plainly treats it just like any other local event."
"All the heated scenes we see on TV are mainly generated by political parties and the big guns in Taipei," added Wang, whose store is located on Chungcheng Road in downtown Hualien.
With the by-election coming just a few months ahead of next year's presidential election, the run-off has been turned into a proxy battlefield for the pan-green and pan-blue camp's larger conflict. This has drawn a host of political luminaries from both the ruling and opposition parties to Hualien.
On Sunday, the last weekend before the election, President Chen Shui-bian (
A furniture dealer surnamed Lu told what happened when Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) visited Hualien last week to illustrate his point that politicians from Taipei are more fervent about the by-election than the local Hualien electorate.
Ma was in Hualien last Friday campaigning for Hsieh. When he accompanied Hsieh in a street procession in downtown Hualien, Ma was surrounded by female bypassers who eagerly wanted to shake his hand, Lu said.
"Given the location and purpose of the street procession, people watching on TV probably would have thought to themselves that the women must be excited Hualien voters," Lu said. "The truth was the women were actually tourists from Taipei."
Lu said political stars stumping for their respective candidates are unlikely to influence the Hualien electorate in choosing their candidate on Saturday.
"Many of us already know who we want to vote for," Lu said. "The visits of the political big guns from Taipei serve their own party interest more than influencing our decision over which candidate to support."
Not all Hualien residents complained about the extra media attention the county has received.
Saying that the by-election has greatly boosted the county's visibility, many Hualien residents reacted positively to the visits of top political figures and were happy that the exposure has helped attract tourists to Hualien.
"Because of the election and political importance politicians have attached to it, almost every media group in the country now has daily stories flashing the word `Hualien,'" said a young clothes-store clerk surnamed Sun.
"Hualien has grabbed the country's attention, something it has rarely done in the past," she added.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,