The celebration of the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) 17th anniversary, which will be held in Taichung on Sunday, will focus on the themes of legislative reform and the referendum bill, party officials said yesterday.
To highlight the party's calls for legislative reform, passage of a referendum bill and to showcase the party's achievements over the past 17 years, the DPP recently released three TV commercials to promote the major policies of the governing administration.
The first TV commercial narrates a teenage student's life to tout education reform. The mini-documentary depicts a 16-year-old senior high-school student, who has developed three extra-curricular activities on his own: photography, fishing and insect collecting. The footage of the commercial ends with the slogan: "re-working education reform through accumulated experiences."
"By presenting a senior high school student's pursuit of a variety of academic interests, we want to convey the message of diversity in education," Mason Yang (
The other two TV commercials center on the party's referendum policy to show the process of voting, decision-making and politics as an integral part of people's daily lives.
The commercials dramatize casting ballots as an ordinary practice by showing primary-school students choosing their class leaders and families deciding on where to go on vacation
"These are basic things we learn when we are little and they are core to the spirit of referendums," Yang said yesterday.
Legislative reform is one of the main appeals of the ruling administration's policies in the run up to the presidential election, Yang said. The party has already garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures on a petition demanding passage of a referendum law as part of its legislative reforms. The party's goal is 1 million signatures.
"This shows our determination to implement legislative reform. Having the petition in hand, we could demand that the government hold the referendum immediately as long as the referendum draft law is passed," Yang said yesterday.
Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), one of the most popular KMT politicians, will be in attendance, the party confirmed yesterday.
"Hu is expected to show up at the DPP's birthday celebration in his capacity as city mayor," said Cheng Wen-tsang (
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