One of the leaders of the Sunflower movement Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) on Tuesday night announced his intention to run in the legislative by-election as an independent in Miaoli County.
The by-election, which is to be held on Feb. 7 next year, will decide the seat being vacated by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Yao-chang (徐耀昌), who recently won the race for Miaoli County commissioner in the Nov. 29 elections.
Hsu’s successor will have little time in office, as the KMT lawmaker’s term ends in January 2016.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Chen, one of the leading figures during the Sunflower movement’s 23-day occupation of the legislature’s main chamber earlier this year, posted on Facebook that he entered the race to counter the policies of Hsu and his predecessor, outgoing KMT Miaoli county commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻).
As a long-term opponent of Liu, Chen spearheaded several social movements in Miaoli, including a prolonged campaign against the seizure and demolition of private homes in Dapu Borough (大埔) last year.
“Under the devastation caused by Liu Cheng-hung, the fiscal condition of Miaoli lags behind the entire country,” Chen said.
“The very moment our future commissioner Hsu Yao-chang won the election, he publicly pledged that many controversial development projects during Liu’s term would be continued,” Chen added. “Land expropriation regulations have also remained unchanged.”
Although Miaoli ranks among the few places in which the KMT won by a large margin in the recent elections, Chen said that an increasing number of Miaoli youth were willing to work for reform through social movements.
“The meaning of this race is to call on Miaoli’s younger generation to actively take responsibility while humbly listening to voices from our native county,” Chen said, citing experience in local grassroots organizations since 2008.
If elected, Chen said he would monitor President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration to follow through on demands made by the Sunflower movement, including a halt to the cross-strait service trade agreement and the passage of legislation on an oversight mechanism for future cross-strait agreements.
In concert with Taiwan March, a youth activist group Chen co-founded with fellow Sunflower activist Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and Academia Sinica researcher Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), Chen said he would also make reforming the Referendum Act (公民投票法) a priority.
Chen dismissed concerns that his unfulfilled mandatory military service might pose difficulties for him holding public office, saying that conscription can be postponed as long as he still holds student status, which will remain effective through 2018.
Chen is a graduate student in sociology at National Tsing Hua University.
Although the Central Election Commission said that current regulations do not bar candidates from entering races before fulfilling military service, officials said Chen’s application might face challenges if he were pronounced guilty in ongoing trials related to his involvement in the Sunflower movement.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said it is willing to remain “flexible” in its arrangements for nominating a candidates for the upcoming by-elections, including potential cooperation with independent candidates in “constituencies with unique circumstances,” spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
Because Miaoli has traditionally been a “deep-blue” KMT stronghold, widespread media speculation has risen as to whether the DPP would be willing to support Chen in a similar fashion to Taipei mayor-elect Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who received the DPP’s support as an independent.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) also expressed support for Chen, saying that he would be glad to stump for him.
“Society today belongs to the younger generation,” Lee said. “All our institutions should allow space for young people to flourish, instead of obstructing them.”
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: