A by-election on Jan. 4 to elect a president for the student union at Tainan’s National Cheng Kung University was invalidated due to low voter turnout.
Political science student Lin Yi-ying (林易瑩) and her running mate, Wu Hsing-ju (吳馨如), a Taiwanese literature student, were the only candidates in the race, advocating gender equality and grassroots democracy.
The poll results released by the student government showed that while Lin won 68.17 percent of the votes, voter turnout for the election was 5.7 percent, below the 10 percent threshold required for a valid election, rendering the vote null and void.
Photo courtesy of Wu Hsing-ju
The result meant that acting president Lin Ming-yi (林明儀) is to serve out the rest of the former president’s term, according to a post on the student union’s social media site.
Although there were no other candidates, Lin Yi-ying and Wu said they had aggressively campaigned for election.
Lin Yi-ying, who participated in the Sunflower movement and the occupation of the Legislative Yuan’s main chamber in 2014, had received endorsement from Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆), who was among the leaders of the movement and is a Cheng Kung University alumnus. She also received praise from Democratic Progressive Party Tainan City Councilor Lee Tui-chih (李退之) in an online post that Lee wrote, Lin Yi-ying said.
She said she had contacted professors and student activists from other universities in northern Taiwan in a bid to create a Cabinet.
In the hope of increasing voter enthusiasm, she had experimented with unconventional campaign strategies, such as printing flyers that featured herself in a bikini and Wu holding cotton candy, Lin Yi-ying said.
Some students criticized her for “showing too much skin and too little dignity,” Lin Yi-ying said, adding that she dismissed such concerns.
“As long as it makes me feel comfortable, it is no one’s business whether I wear a bikini,” she said.
“What you wear on the outside does not reflect your substance,” Wu said, adding: “[President] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is a well-dressed man; what does he have to show for his accomplishments?”
Their struggle was against voter apathy, Lin Yi-ying said, adding that her message to her possible opponents was: “If you are angry at us, why complain when you can vote against us?”
“Disagreements need to be openly expressed if we are to build dialogue,” Wu said.
The election’s results would not deter their political stance on and off campus, the duo said, adding that they would vote in tomorrow’s presidential and legislative elections.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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