The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is to present a new main campaign message for the Nov. 24 nine-in-one elections in hopes of energizing its base, a DPP official said yesterday.
“Reform for the next generation” was the campaign message the party had rolled out in July.
However, due to a perceived lack of enthusiasm, the DPP leadership, in a bid to energize the party base, is planning to present “no backtrack from reforms” and “protect Taiwan together” as the new campaign slogans, a senior party official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Photo: Su Fang-ho, Taipei Times
The new campaign message would resonate with President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) address on Double Ten National Day, they said.
The DPP has lost ground in opinion polls, with margins narrowing even in Kaohsiung, which has for a long time reliably voted for the DPP, the official said.
In light of such developments, energizing and motivating the base tops the agenda for DPP strategists, who are increasingly looking to attack as a way to wrest control of the debate from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the official added.
The DPP legislative caucus has held a series of news conferences to slam the KMT over its alleged forgery of signatures on referendum petitions.
Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Chu (陳菊) has also maintained high visibility on the campaign trail with hard-pressed DPP candidates, stumping for hopefuls in Miaoli County and helping to coordinate the DPP’s strategy in Yilan County.
The DPP Youth Organization yesterday launched a campaign team of young political appointees who are to act as “campaign surrogates” for DPP candidates.
The DPP governs 13 counties and cities, and mayoral elections in the special municipalities of Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung are deemed safe, DPP Secretary-General Hung Yao-fu (洪耀福) said yesterday.
However, the party faces a tough race for the commissionership in Yilan County, while Changhua County and Chiayi City are toss-ups, he said.
The DPP aims to wrest New Taipei City from the KMT and it also has high hopes for Taitung County, he added.
Asked whether the campaign surrogates could compromise the political neutrality of government administration, Hung said that all officials assisting campaigns have taken leaves of absence.
Additional reporting by Su Fang-ho
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods