The close race between the two Taipei mayoral candidates has prompted the two camps to largely abandon traditional hard-line campaign strategies and de-emphasize party loyalty for the purpose of attracting support from swing voters, as the election looms in less than 10 days.
Both Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) so far this month have refrained from holding large-scale campaign events to consolidate their base. Instead, they have filled daily schedules with visits to local districts to interact with residents.
For Hau, who has always been awkward expressing himself in public, communicating with voters face-to-face has not been his forte. To help him enhance his connection with voters, the KMT has arranged for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who doubles as the KMT chairman, and KMT -Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), to accompany Hau he intensively canvass the streets this month looking for support.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Last week alone, Ma campaigned for the mayor on three consecutive days. He spent more than two hours at the Raohe Street night market on Saturday night, leading Hau to shake hands with visitors, and sat down chatting with vendors while eating stinky tofu.
The 58-year-old mayor has also learned to stay and chat with the crowd when attending municipal activities, rather than leaving immediately after addressing the events.
Although the KMT is holding a rally on Sunday for Hau, it is playing down its previous campaign theme of anti-corruption in response to former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) most recent sentence of a total of 19 years of for corruption charges, and the KMY is turning it into a carnival-like event.
King said the rally, named “A Walk for -Taipei-Taipei Flies High,” will be filled with balloons and toys, and all of Taipei’s residents are welcome to share their thoughts about the city’s future.
The new strategy to tone down the traditional “deep-blue” rhetoric in Hau’s election campaign can also be found in his latest campaign ad, in which he carries a girl on his back wearing a pink T-shirt. The KMT’s blue party color was absent in the ad.
Su, on the other hand, has been leading a non-traditional campaign since the very beginning. With the slogan “Let Taipei surpass Taipei,” his campaign has focused more on social welfare issues and has adopted bright colors such as orange and pink for his campaign.
He has made use of popular online social networking services like Facebook and Plurk to discuss municipal issues and has replaced large-scale campaign activities with hip-hop concerts and “living room meetings” in all of the city’s 12 districts, where local residents have been invited to share their concerns with him.
As a seasoned politician who has maintained a grassroots style, Su interacts with voters more passionately than his KMT counterpart and never hesitates to shake hands or give hugs to supporters.
Su’s campaign spokesman Lee Hou-ching (李厚慶) said reshaping the political alignment in Taipei City, a traditional KMT stronghold, is a main reason behind Su’s decision to run in the election.
The increasing number of swing voters in this election campaign, Lee said, showed that the traditional support bases of the pan-blue and pan-green camps in the city can be changed.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS