Students yesterday urged the government to empower 18-year-olds by lowering the voting age following the establishment of the Legislative Yuan’s Constitutional Amendment Committee last week.
Soochow University political science student Allan Hsiao (蕭任佑), who was among those who in 2015 criticized opaque voting procedures amid a process to change high-school curricula, said that if 18-year-olds five years ago had voting rights, the movement would have been an exercise in civil disobedience by “citizens” rather than merely “a group of protesting students who had a sense of justice.”
In 2015, then-president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration tried to change the high-school curriculum, reducing localized content and adding more Chinese literature and history.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Students protested the changes, including by occupying the Ministry of Education building in Taipei.
High-school students, who do not have voting rights, had to speak for themselves, showing that society was indifferent over the administration’s incompetence, Hsiao said.
Amid indifference by society, the responsibility was shouldered by “non-citizens,” which showed that being a citizen should be judged on willingness to take responsibility as opposed to age, he said.
Lowering the voting age would entitle 18-year-olds to the rights and responsibilities of decisionmakers in the nation’s development, he said.
Hsu Kuang-tse (許冠澤), a student at National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, said that after the Wild Strawberry movement in 2008, more high-school and college students established organizations to pay attention to public affairs.
The movement was initiated by college students and professors to protest excessive police force against demonstrators who opposed a visit to Taiwan by Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), who was chairman of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits at the time.
The protests against curriculum changes led the ministry to add student representatives to its review committee, Hsu said.
The good performance of the representatives, students at senior-high school or below, demonstrated that age is not a definite criterion to determine whether a person should participate in public affairs, he said.
Fu Jen Catholic University student Yu Teng-chieh (游騰傑) said that it is also important to give students more platforms to express their opinions about school regulations.
Students’ rights to voice their opinions at school meetings should also be valued so that Taiwan can be a true democracy, Yu said.
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