Heavy metal band Chthonic’s lead vocalist, Freddy Lim (林昶佐), also a founding member of the New Power Party (NPP), yesterday said that he planned to run in next year’s legislative election.
“I will compete for the legislative seat in Taipei’s Daan District (大安),” Lim told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview. “I decided to run in Daan simply because I was born and raised there, and my attachment to the neighborhood prompted me to do something for its residents.”
Lim has rejected the traditional bipolarization of the electorate into pan-blue and pan-green camps, saying that such polarization should no longer be considered effective, as Daan, like any other electoral district, is plural in nature.
“Daan is home to a heterogenous population, which includes people like me — a founding member of a minor party — and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s [KMT] Taipei mayoral candidate in last year’s elections Sean Lien (連勝文),” he said.
The rocker and long-time human rights activist would be pitted against incumbent Chiang Nai-hsin (蔣乃辛) of the KMT in the electoral district, which is traditionally considered a pan-blue stronghold.
Chiang was re-elected as the legislator for Daan in 2012 with 108,488 votes — 60.02 percent of the total votes cast in the district — overpowering his Democratic Progressive Party opponent Chao Shih-chiang (趙士強), who gained only 54,113 ballots, or 29.94 percent of the votes.
Lim’s announcement came shortly after two human rights lawyers from the NPP — Hu Po-yen (胡博硯) and Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) — announced their bids to enter the legislative elections for New Taipei City’s Zhonghe District (中和) and Hsinchu City last week.
The one-month-old NPP advocates a “normalized” national status for Taiwan, promotion of tax reform and improved social security measures, as well as reform to the much maligned Referendum Act (公民投票法).
Lim said that a more thorough statement on his candidacy would be made public tomorrow, likely accompanied by the announcement of the second wave of NPP candidates.
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