Education, jobs and transportation are on the agenda for Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Sinbei City mayoral candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫), who unveiled more of his election platform at a traditional market yesterday.
Chu yesterday focused his campaign on the social front, calling himself an “education-based mayor” that would seek to build more local schools, despite declining enrollment figures.
“In the future, [students] won’t have to study elsewhere. More of our children will be able to learn and happily grow up at local schools,” he said.
The 49-year-old former Taoyuan County commissioner added he would have a comprehensive plan for economic development. While he did not give specific details, he said he was known as a mayor that could successfully lure businesses to set-up shop in the nation’s most populous municipality.
He pledged to create more local jobs and develop Sinbei into an international tourist destination.
ELDERLY CARE
On elderly care, Chu said he believed in the creation of an environment where elderly Sinbei residents wouldn’t have to leave home to receive quality nursing care.
“The elderly need full-hearted [care] and respect; nursing homes can’t completely replace family-based attention,” said Chu, who resigned in May from the vice premier post to run in the Sinbei race.
In previous weeks, Chu had focused more on transit strategy and the construction of future MRT lines, pledging to quadruple the city’s MRT system to 80 stations by 2020.
Touching on the issue again yesterday, he said that like his opponent, Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), he also believed in the construction of rapid bus lines to complement any future MRT stations.
Over the weekend, Chu was also actively courting Hakka votes and young voters’ support by conducting a dialogue with a younger audience at a book signing for his newly published autobiography and meeting with representatives from Hakka community groups.
TSAI ING-WEN
Tsai, meanwhile, held a series of town hall meetings in Sindian (新店) on Saturday, pledging she would increase park space and create new dedicated bus routes.
She added that if elected, she would consolidate existing transit networks, including the MRT, bus lines and community shuttles, to facilitate development in the soon-to-be special municipality.
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
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