The People First Party (PFP) is confident of winning 10 legislative seats and would work with other parties to pass bills that affect people’s lives, party spokeswoman Belle Yu (于美人) said yesterday.
About 30 percent of moderate voters have been silent about whom they are going to vote for in the presidential election, she said.
“When we were canvassing for votes on the streets, many told us that they are moderate voters who chose to support their candidates without saying anything. This has moved us and inspired us. Whatever happens, we should do much better than last time,” she said, referring to the 2016 elections.
At least three of its legislative candidates could be elected and the party is trying to win enough party votes that seven of its legislator-at-large nominees would be able to take seats, she added.
Asked how the PFP would work with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to introduce and pass bills if the results are what it expects, Yu said that small parties are expected to gain ground this year.
“We have said that we want the legislature to be a more ‘colorful’ place, not just blue [KMT] and green [DPP]. The two major parties have often taken positions on bills simply because they were the opposite of what the other party said, regardless if it whether it was a good bill, which meant that bills that were actually good for the nation and the public often failed to pass,” Yu said.
“Even though we had only three legislators and an independent lawmaker who worked with us in the recent legislative term, we actually got more bills passed than any other party, because we were not judging the bills by their color or using political ideology to determine if we should support a bill,” she said.
“As long as a bill was good for the public or was about something everyone could agree on, the PFP tried everything to get it passed,” she added.
The party has arranged for Hong Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) to attend tonight’s pre-election rally in Taipei and it hopes that he would not get stuck in traffic, Yu said.
“We want the rally to demonstrate the power of average voters, whose existence has helped stabilize the nation. In the past 20 years, [PFP] Chairman [James] Soong (宋楚瑜) has heard the voice of the people and knows what they want. It was not that the people did not elect him, but it was that they never gave up on him and kept wanting him to run in elections,” she said.
The party has also invited some top singers to perform at tonight’s rally, Yu said.
“One thing I can guarantee you is that Soong will not be singing at the rally,” she said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS