The campaign office of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) yesterday released a music video in its latest attempt to reduce the impact of his so-called “princeling” background of privilege and wealth on young voters.
The music video, directed by Kuang Sheng (鄺盛), features young people dancing to a song titled The Same World (同一種世界), a mix of hip-hop and R&B with lyrics by Vincent Fang (方文山).
Lien said he liked the lyrics, music and script, which depicted young people on motorcycles, in luxury cars and on skateboards.
“The images in the video were what I wanted to convey. This is is my style,” Lien said.
At the end of the video, a message appears saying that family background is not a criterion for judging a street dance competition, because all that matters are skills and concentration.
“You can say you like or dislike a candidate by intuition and subjectivity, but you need to understand a candidate’s policy platforms objectively to decide how would you like the world to be,” the lines read, adding that it does not matter whether a candidate had a privileged upbringing or not because: “We are seeking votes [like anyone else].”
Lien said that he hoped that the election would remain focused on discussions of policy.
“Voting is not just a way for people to vent dissatisfaction. It is a chance to find a way to resolve problems facing society,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Lien’s deputy campaign director, Justine Chou (周守訓), called a press conference to address 10 “top events” she said were made up to smear Lien, including the alleged wiretapping of independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) policy office — an incident that is still being investigated.
Separately, Lien visited Evergreen Group founder Chang Yung-fa (張榮發) to seek his opinion on Taipei’s economic development.
On a TV program yesterday evening, former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) joined Lien’s father, former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), in criticizing Ko over his family’s service as “loyal subjects” (皇民) of the Japanese emperor during the Japanese colonial era.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the