Five of the six pairs of independents and minor party presidential hopefuls urged young people to participate in national politics as they answered questions from first-time voters at a forum held by the First-time Policy Observation Group in Taipei yesterday.
The group was created in August by nearly 30 university students, mostly student association presidents, to ask presidential candidates to respond to young people’s political concerns.
At the event, the group listed seven policies they would like to see implemented: changing the mechanism for student loans; improving the management of schools; facilitating cooperation between schools and industry; working toward reasonable and fair tuition; providing better employment opportunities; ensuring reasonable and affordable housing; and working toward a sustainable natural environment.
“To secure affordable housing prices so that young people can afford to start a family is the most important issue,” said Independent Lee Hsing-chang (李幸長), founder of the Snails Without Shells Alliance.
Lee said students who came to Taipei to study and make a living used to be able to afford a down payment on an apartment after working a few years, but with today’s high housing prices, young people might have to be in debt all their lives to afford an ordinary apartment.
People United Party Chairperson Hsu Jung-shu (許榮淑) said she was most concerned with educational issues.
“I feel heartbroken because the government is too incompetent to respond to your demands,” she said.
“There should be a mechanism of inspecting the efficacy of schools,” she said, adding that “only when education is successful can the young people be responsible for their positions in the society.”
Taiwanese National Party’s Chuang Mung-hsieh (莊孟學) said the debt from student loans was just the tip of the iceberg, with the more serious problem of national debt lurking beneath the surface
“The government should solve the national debt and student loan issues by splitting state-owned enterprises’ stocks with the people, instead of using the people’s tax money to run these businesses, but only sharing the revenues with a few shareholders,” Chuang said.
Independent Lin Ching-ying’s (林金瑛) running mate, Shih Hsiang-ching (石翊靖), said the biggest problem facing the country was “fake democracy” and having “too many political party slaves.”
He said he ran for city council member in his thirties because he could not get councilors to respond to his questions and that young people who want to solve policy problems should take action and be involved with politics.
Independent Kao Kuo-ching (高國慶) said enacting a “basic law” was most important, as policies change when government official change, but institutional rules and regulations are persistent.
The candidates all urged young people to participate in politics.
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