The I Want a Good President Alliance — which is comprised of several civic groups concerned with a variety of issues — yesterday released its recommendations as to who different groups of voters should cast their ballot for in the Jan. 14 presidential election.
Representatives from the Alliance for Fair Tax Reform, the Anti-Poverty Alliance, the Judicial Reform Foundation, Amnesty International Taiwan, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and the Youth Wants to be Rich — all member organizations of the alliance — announced their recommendations for voters concerned with different issues.
The groups examined the policy platforms of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜), and also used the results of a survey it sent to the candidates, which asked for their opinions on various social issues, such as judicial reform, tax reform, cross-strait relations, growing national debt and employment conditions.
While both Tsai and Soong returned their surveys, Ma did not, the alliance said.
Based on the survey responses, the alliance recommended Tsai for voters who are concerned about youth employment issues, dispatch workers, social assistance and raising taxes for the wealthy.
Soong was recommended for those who are concerned about dispatch workers and raising tax rates for the wealthy.
“We don’t recommend anyone for cross-strait relations, judicial reform, public childcare, resolving the growing national debt and media reform because none of the three candidates gave satisfactory answers,” Anti-Poverty Alliance spokesman Chien Hsi-chieh said at a news conference held at the Legislative Yuan.
The Youth Wants to be Rich executive member Ernie Chen (陳方隅) echoed Chien’s sentiment.
“We didn’t recommend anyone based on cross-strait policies because no one raised policy platforms that would safeguard Taiwan’s sovereignty, maintain peace, promote human rights and advance trade relations across the strait,” he said.
Commenting on the three candidates’ policy platforms on judicial reform, Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正) said Tsai actually did highlight a direction for judicial reform, “but we still need to follow her ideas more closely.”
As for Soong, Lin said the PFP candidate also has some good ideas, but lack they details, while Ma’s ideas about judicial reform “are simply empty.”
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