First-time voters could decide the nation’s neck-and-neck presidential race, the DPP said yesterday, urging young voters to show up on polling day to help shape the nation’s future.
An estimated 760,000, out of a total electorate of 18 million, are able to cast a ballot for the first time on Jan. 14, having turned 18 since the last vote in 2008, and they could sway the outcome in the close race, observers said.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has been reaching out to young people with a string of Internet and campus activities, said it hopes its presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), will bag more than half of the first-time votes in her bid to become the nation’s first female president.
“Older voters have mostly made up their minds, but young people’s votes are still up for grabs. They could be the critical few to determine this election,” said Lin Ho-ming (林鶴明), vice head of the youth division of the DPP’s campaign.
“Young people can determine Taiwan’s next step ... they want to see dignity on their own soil and they want to change Taiwan,” Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) of the DPP said.
Young supporters of the DPP expressed concern that Taiwan had become overly reliant on China under the rule of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is seeking re-election.
“I think Ma is putting aside Taiwan’s sovereignty in order to please China and he will lead us to unification with the mainland,” said Tseng Yu-shan, a 21-year-old college student.
Candies Hsieh, a graduate student, said she supported Ma, because he had helped the economy via such measures such as allowing in more Chinese tourists.
“I think Ma is clean and hard-working, and he can maintain stability in Taiwan. If we have a different leader, everything will have to start all over again and that might be bad for Taiwan,” she said.
Some voters, on the other hand, blamed Ma for a widening income gap, rising unemployment and a sluggish economy.
“Ma has been doing poorly in the past three years and we need a new leader, who can bring a new vision and give us more hope,” Kao Wei-sheng, 20, said.
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