President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) re-election team hopes to run an “innovative and united campaign” to communicate with young and first-time voters in the hopes of winning their support, spokesman Liao Tai-hsiang (廖泰翔) said on Saturday.
Young voters can access Tsai’s social media content through a variety of channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Line and YouTube, which her team hopes will make them feel that there is no gap in communications between the president and themselves, he said.
Tsai’s Line account allows followers to insert images of themselves into photographs of her and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative candidates, he said.
Photo: Chen Hsin-yi, Taipei Times
The campaign team aims to improve integration of its offline and online interactions with Tsai’s supporters to boost online support for her, an anonymous source said.
A recent “Social Media Night” the campaign organized was well-received by young attendees, and more such events are planned for next month and later to “turn online support into actual votes,” the source said.
Asked why Tsai appears to be polling higher among young voters than her Chinese Nationalist Party opponent, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), a DPP member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Han’s “China-friendly” cross-strait stance, his unwillingness to condemn Beijing’s “one country, two systems” policy and the KMT’s claims that the DPP is instilling fear in Taiwanese by evoking “dried mango strips” (芒果乾) — a play on words with the Chinese phrase “a sense of the nation’s impending doom” (亡國感) — are at odds with the views of young voters.
While Han has not kept his mayoral campaign promise to “make Kaohsiung rich” and is “running away” by seeking the presidency, Tsai’s positions on issues such as pension reform, transitional justice, marriage equality and national sovereignty “protect the rights and interests of young people,” and are reasons why she is leading in the polls, the DPP member said.
Han has “clearly become the butt of the joke for young people on the Internet,” they added.
The achievements of Tsai’s administration — including wage increases, tax reductions and childcare and housing subsidies — are “gradually coming to the surface,” Liao said.
Tsai’s administration will continue to pay attention to the issues faced by young people, such as employment and starting a family, and she would continue to seek to ease the pressure on the younger generation through her policies, he said.
Younger people support Tsai because of her “clear stance of insisting on Taiwan’s sovereignty,” he said.
In cross-strait relations, diplomacy, defense and other areas, Tsai’s performance has “met the young generation’s expectations about a national identity,” he added.
SELF-RELIANCE: Taiwan would struggle to receive aid in the event of an invasion, so it must prepare to ‘hold its own’ for the first 70 days of a war, a defense expert said Taiwan should strengthen infrastructure, stock up on reserves and step up efforts to encourage Taiwanese to fight against an enemy, legislators and experts said on Tuesday last week. The comments sought to summarize what the nation should learn from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has exceeded 300 days, since Feb. 24 last year. Institute of National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said that the war in Ukraine highlighted the importance of being ready for war. Taiwan’s development of an “asymmetrical warfare” doctrine and extending mandatory conscription to one year is a good start to preparation of defense against a
The Central Epidemic Command Center yesterday said it would delay the lifting of the indoor mask mandate, citing public health considerations and ongoing discussions on how the policy should be implemented. Earlier this week, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the CECC’s spokesman, said officials from several ministries were working on the policy and an announcement would be made yesterday. However, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝), who heads the CECC, yesterday said that the policy was still under review. Wang said its implementation would be “delayed slightly” due to three main factors. First, the center
END OF SERIES: As the first generation of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines are set to expire, the CECC would no longer offer them to children younger than four years old The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported the nation’s first case of a person infected with the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant of SARS-CoV-2. The Taiwanese man in his 20s arrived from Canada on Jan. 22, said Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), who is deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division. He tested positive after reporting having a runny nose and muscle soreness while in airport quarantine, Lo said. The XBB.1.5 subvariant is the dominant strain in the US, but there is no evidence to suggest that it causes more severe illness than other Omicron subvariants, he said,
NORMALIZING TIES: The delegation led by the KMT’s Johnny Chiang is to meet with British lawmakers, think tanks and business groups to discuss developments A legislative delegation led by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) arrived in the UK yesterday to rally support for Taiwan’s bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Chiang heads the Legislative Yuan’s Taiwan-UK Interparliamentary Amity Association. The delegation also includes KMT legislators Ma Wen-chun (馬文君), Wen Yu-hsia (溫玉霞), Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷), Sandy Yu (游毓蘭) and Wu I-ding (吳怡玎). The group is to meet with British lawmakers Alicia Kearns, who chairs the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee; Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the House Defence Select Committee; and Bob Stewart, who cochairs the
RSS