The delay to President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election campaign headquarters’ sixth youth camp was a result of its disorganization, one would-be participant said on Sunday.
The sixth “Democratic Election’s Great” youth camp event was scheduled to be held in Taipei on Saturday and Sunday to coincide with the birthday of Republic of China founding father Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙).
The event was planned to educate participants about Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水), a formative figure in Taiwan’s colonial resistance movement against Japan who holds the title “Taiwanese Sun Yat-sen.”
However, a student named Arthur Wong, who enrolled in the camp, said he received a short message from the Ma campaign headquarters the day before the event saying that the event would be postponed by one week because of poor weather and the fact that some students were taking midterm exams.
Ma’s campaign headquarters spokesperson Yin Wei (殷瑋) said yesterday that campaign events, including the youth camp, were expected to hold seven rounds across the nation.
Yin said an average of 70 people applied to take part in each event.
Fifty people had applied to attend the sixth youth camp, Yin said, adding that a number of those applicants had called his office to request the event be postponed.
Yin said the youth camps, the KMT Youth League and the Institute on Policy Research and Development camps have been attended by more than 1,000 people and that the other symposiums held in Taipei and New Taipei City (新北市) attracted at least 60 and at most 150 attendees.
Yin said the youth camps are a success and they would continue to be held to raise youth participation in public matters as well as increase interaction with the younger generation.
However, Wong said that after telephoning the campaign headquarters he discovered the true reason the event was postponed was because it had not even received 25 applications of the allotted 60.
Wong said the camp program kept being altered, adding that when one female participant asked the campaign headquarters where they would be staying, she was told: “We can only tell you that it’s in Banciao District (板橋), [New Taipei City], but all other information is still classified.”
Wong said he and his friend signed up for the event because they had received confirmation that the chief executive of Ma’s re-election campaign, King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), would give a talk at the camp.
After the event was rescheduled, the speech was canceled, Wong said.
“Ma wishes to attract the support of first-time voters in this election, but after personally being involved with this event, I have seen the ridiculous and outrageous mistakes the Ma campaign office has made,” Wong said.
Using students’ midterm exams as a reason to postpone the event was ridiculous, as Ma once chatted with National University of Kaohsiung students the night before their midterms, Wong said, adding that the campaign office’s response to the female student’s inquiry was ludicrous.
“Ma says he has more than 200,000 fans on his Facebook page, but it is stunning that he could not even get 60 people to show up for his event,” Wong said.
Wong wrote about the event on his blog on Friday and received a lot of feedback from other netizens. One, named Andie Li, commented that the KMT’s youth vote would “dissolve like bubbles.”
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS