Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday launched an appeal for votes, saying the party’s candidates were best suited to represent local interests ahead of Saturday’s ballot for borough heads, village chiefs and township representatives.
“Our candidates have a long history of service in their communities … In these local elections, the DPP will focus on administrative ability and will demonstrate a willingness to serve and take care of the areas they represent,” Tsai said.
While the DPP usually fare less than satisfactorily in local elections, Tsai said the DPP would try to win as many as 1,000 seats.
These will be the last standalone local elections before they are merged with mayoral and county commissioner elections in 2014. More than 6,000 seats are up for grabs on Saturday — 2,322 township representatives and 4,077 local village and borough heads.
Local borough head elections for Taipei and Sinbei cities, as well as Greater Taichung, Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung will be held alongside the year-end special municipality elections on Nov. 27.
The DPP said yesterday it would field more than 500 candidates for township representatives and 650 for the borough chief elections on Saturday. A significant number of the candidates are only indirectly supported by the party and are running officially as independents.
DPP officials said they expect to field at least another 400 candidates in the year-end borough head elections.
“These are important elections for us,” Tsai said, adding that it would be a key test of whether the DPP has managed to expand its grassroots support.
In related news, yesterday marked the completion of the DPP’s nomination for city councilor candidates in the year-end elections. The party nominated 98 candidates in five cities. The vote will be held alongside the mayoral vote and officials will take office on Dec. 25.
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:
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