For 34-year-old Chang Chia-ling (張嘉玲), a typical weekday consists of sitting down with supporters, attending press conferences and protesting in front of the Presidential Office.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) contender for city councilor in Sinbei City is one of a host of fresh faces that both the DPP and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) are fostering before the year-end special municipality elections.
Chang and the dozens of other younger candidates in the December elections are part of a growing chorus of political figures that both parties have been trying to attract — and retain — to break free of the traditional political mold and engage an increasingly politically apathetic younger generation.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
“We want to give younger people who care about politics and who have ideas about how this country should be run a chance to prove themselves,” KMT officials in charge of candidate recruitment told the Taipei Times.
The KMT is mulling a policy that would give contenders aged under the age of 35 a 10 percent boost in internal party polls used in the nomination process. KMT officials said the policy would be finalized before the December elections.
The DPP is also considering a proposal backed by senior party members that would see the DPP also give a 10 percent boost to aspiring candidates making their first mark in politics.
DPP officials said that sitting politicians, including councilors and lawmakers, would not be eligible for the boost as it was aimed at bringing new faces into a party that had been accused last month of “recycling candidates.”
While officials from both parties say that interest from the younger generation has been growing, they acknowledge that few who show an interest in politics end up running.
“The problem for them is that many of the older generation they are up against have status and connections within their electoral districts. It’s hard for the young candidates to match them in terms of resources or name recognition,” a KMT official said.
Li Mei-jhen (李眉蓁), who is vying for a KMT city councilor nomination, said one problem the KMT faced was its long tradition of picking candidates with the most local connections, even for party posts, which excludes many of the younger generation.
To address the problem, former deputy head of the KMT’s youth group Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正) has called for the party to increase the percentage boost even further, saying that the current proposal would not make a noticeable difference in youth participation.
DPP contender for city councilor in Kaohsiung City, Chen Cheng-wen (陳政聞), agreed, but added that methods other than opinion polls existed that could bring in fresh faces.
“Some of the more substantive measures that can help the younger generation include participation in party politics and other party posts,” the former DPP Kaohsiung branch head said.
However, this realization does not seem to have deterred some potential candidates from coming up with new and increasingly creative tactics to score media coverage to bolster their name recognition.
Former DPP legislator Tsai Chi-fang’s (蔡啟芳) son, Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘), drew media attention for a rumored bid for lawmaker earlier this month after he unveiled a large billboard in Taipei complaining that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) policies had left him without a girlfriend.
Political candidates, especially among the younger generation, have many different styles, Chang said, but added that what is most important “is a will to work hard, to earn the voters’ trust and to work for Taiwan’s future.”
“This is what matters, regardless if you are a young candidate or an older candidate,” Chang said. “If you can do this, the 10 percent boost becomes irrelevant.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching