The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) wants people under the age of 35 and migrants to run in the councilor elections next year to fill vacancies left by former DPP councilors who were elected to the legislature or appointed to the Cabinet, a legislator said yesterday.
DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文), the party’s Electoral Strategy Committee convenor, said that the committee proposed nominating younger candidates, new migrants or people who have made a special contribution to fill 11 vacancies left by former DPP councilors in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taichung, Taoyuan, Keelung and Chunghua.
There are 10 vacancies left by Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤), Chiang Yung-chang (江永昌), Wu Chi-ming (吳琪銘), Chang Hung-lu (張宏陸), Chen Lai Su-me (陳賴素美), Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅), Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書), Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應), Huang Hsiu-fang (黃秀芳) and Hung Tsung-yi (洪宗熠), who are former city and county councilors elected to the Legislative Yuan.
The other vacancy was left by Taipei City Councilor Tung Chung-yen (童仲彥), who was expelled from the DPP after a domestic violence scandal in February.
The DPP will nominate candidates without primary elections for the 11 seats, while in other constituencies regular primary elections will still be held.
There is no age limit for new migrant and special contributions candidates.
“The nomination principle is in accordance with the DPP’s philosophy to encourage youth participation and ethnic diversity in politics. As the first party to ensure women participate in elections, the DPP encourages pluralism in politics,” DPP spokesman Wang Min-sheng (王閔生) said.
The nomination principle might also be applied to Tainan after the redrawing of the city’s constituencies is completed, as two vacancies were left by former city councilors Kuo Kuo-wen (郭國文) and Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲), who have been appointed deputy minister of labor and been elected a legislator respectively.
Candidates likely to be nominated include DPP spokesman Chang Chih-hao (張志豪), former DPP Department of Youth Development director Huang Shou-ta (黃守達) and Rosalia Wu’s aide, Tai Wei-shan (戴瑋珊).
Asked whether the DPP is promoting younger candidates because of pressure from the New Power Party and the so-called “third-force,” which have a large support base among younger voters, Chen said challenges from other parties have motivated the DPP to change.
“The DPP has been improving its image by promoting younger people and introducing ethnic diversity to the party,” Chen added.
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
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
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