The Taiwan Front for Human Rights in Election (TFHRE), an alliance of several civic groups, yesterday submitted a survey to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), seeking her opinions on rights issues affecting a wide-range of people.
Despite being met by a passionate crowd at the Central Election Commission where she arrived to officially register as the DPP nominee for the Jan. 14 presidential election, Tsai took a few minutes to talk with the TFHRE -representatives and accept a survey form.
“We gave her the survey to ask her opinion on 25 questions that are related to human rights, including judicial reform, transitional justice, electoral system reform, tax reform, gay rights, Aboriginal rights, immigrant rights and nuclear policy,” Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary-general and TFHRE spokeswoman Tsai Chi-hsun (蔡季勳) told reporters outside the commission’s headquarters.
“There is a lot of enthusiasm abour our elections, but not enough discussion or show of opinions about certain public issues. Our survey is designed to see what -candidates think about various human rights issues,” she said.
The front will send the same survey to everyone running in the Jan. 14 legislative elections, via registered mail, once all the candidates have completed the candidacy registration process, she said.
Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強), a human rights lawyer and a TFHRE member, said that while most candidates would say they care about human rights, he suspected that most of them did not know much about the subject.
“Through the survey, we will be able to find out their opinions on different issues,” he said.
The TFHRE also attempted to give President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is seeking re-election, a copy of the survey when he registered his candidacy on Monday, but were unable to meet him, Tsai Chi-hsun said.
The group then delivered the survey to Ma’s campaign headquarters and campaign office administrative deputy director Wu Kuo-sheng (吳國勝) accepted it on the president’s behalf.
Tsai Chi-hsun said they would tally the returned surveys before Human Rights Day on Dec. 10 and then publicize the results on that day.
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