Chiayi County Commissioner Helen Chang (張花冠) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has called her campaign for a second term in office a “competition with myself” and defined her platform as: “To put Chiayi first, the public have the final say.”
In an exclusive interview with the Liberty Times, the Taipei Times’ sister paper, Chang said that the Nov. 29 poll is to mark the second time she has run against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wong Chung-chun (翁重鈞).
Chang added that she was confident she would win again, and by more votes than the last election, which she took by 48,000 ballots.
Despite insisting six times that he would not run in Chiayi, Wong has nonetheless entered the race, Chang said, adding that this suggests her rival lacks legitimacy and is merely playing the role of KMT hit man.
Wong needs to make clear what the KMT promised him in return for him going back on his word, Chang said.
In the face of the governance difficulties posed by the differences between her administration and the ruling party — not least with the KMT-governed Chiayi City Government — as well as by how residential areas are scattered across the county, Chang said she has sought to bolster Chiayi County’s finances by developing the Dapumei (大埔美) and the Ma Chou Hou (馬稠後) industrial parks, as well as establishing the National Palace Museum’s southern branch.
Chang said that more 60 percent of the workers in the first and second stages of the Dapumei Industrial Park project were from Chiayi County, adding that the Ma Chou Hou park’s specialization in optometric and other precision machinery would help create more jobs.
She said that if re-elected, she would step up the pace of the industrial parks’ development, adding that through this type of “in-depth reformation of urban areas and countryside,” she would realize the dreams of many residents to be close to their families and homes.
Despite the delays in the construction of the museum branch, Chang said she believed it would be the turning point for the county and would bring exponential growth to its tourism and cultural industries.
Chang said she would place special emphasis on social welfare policies, as well as increasing the number of jobs available in the hope that local residents would truly feel the effects of the county government’s efforts to improve their lives.
Turning to her indictment on charges of bribery and corruption for allegedly accepting funds from a contractor in the Dapumei project, Chang said she was confident she would be cleared of all charges, adding that the case was “political” in nature and a ploy by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office’s Special Investigation Division to harm her campaign.
The results from the initial trial declared Chang innocent on grounds of insufficient evidence, but the verdict was appealed.
Amid a recent conflict between the Chiayi county and city governments over the area’s county-funded bus stations and cremation houses, Chang praised DPP Legislator Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲), the DPP’s Chiayi City mayoral candidate, saying he had superior abilities compared with rival candidate Chen Yi-chen (陳以真) of the KMT.
“If Twu is elected, I am certain that relations between the Chiayi city and county administrations will become more relaxed,” Chang said, adding that if both the heads of city and county government were from the same political party, it would help push forward the idea of combining Chiayi City with Chiayi and Yunlin countries to make one big agricultural municipality.
The amalgamation would engender a more logical distribution of resources, as well as increasing the amount of resources at hand, Chang said.
Saying that she does her utmost everyday to ensure that her constituents get the best from the county government, Chang said that: “under my governance, Chiayi has truly become a different place, one where employment does not depend on Internet job sites and where ‘green governance’ can truly shine.”
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:
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