The KMT's election campaign heated up yesterday as the party's Taipei chapter launched the "KMT Youth Corps," with the aim of promoting its candidates for the December elections.
Addressing the 600 young people perched on motor scooters outside the Taipei City Council yesterday morning, KMT Vice Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) said that young people are playing an important role in the reform of the KMT.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"They're valuable assets and the driving force behind the party's reform and resurrection," he said.
Members of the youth corps will campaign on their scooters for the party.
Wu added that Taiwanese people had come to understand over the past year and a half since the DPP came to power that Taiwan cannot move forward without the KMT.
"Only the new KMT can lead the nation out of the current economic and social hardship," he said.
Wu also called on the public to support the KMT's legislative candidates.
"None of the KMT candidates nominated for the year-end legislative elections has any connection with black gold politics and they therefore deserve the people's trust," he said.
The party has nominated a total of eight candidates to run in Taipei City constituencies.
The four candidates nominated for the city's northern constituency are deputy chief of the party's cultural affairs department, Tsai Cheng-yuan (
The other four, nominated for the southern constituency, are incumbent lawmakers Apollo Chen (陳學聖), Chen Horng-chi (陳鴻基) and Tina Pan (潘維剛); and John Chang (章孝嚴), a former KMT secretary-general and foreign minister.
After some candidates delivered pep talks, the eight candidates were presented with a giant mock check, symbolizing their campaign promises and encouraging them to be focused, professional and disciplined in the election campaign.
Wu also presented flags to the 12 team captains leading the scooter riders, symbolizing the beginning of the party's campaign activities.
The teams, which are comprised of both KMT members and non-members, were recruited from the Taipei chapter of the KMT Youth Commission.
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
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