The Taipei City Government yesterday strengthened its efforts to promote Saturday's legislative elections by holding an ad campaign in front of an MRT station while defending its decision not to promote referendums as a means to maintain its neutrality.
Lining up in front of the Taipei City Hall MRT station early yesterday, Taipei City Civil Affairs Department Commissioner Huang Lu Ching-ju (黃呂錦茹) and 12 municipal district office heads held placards and distributed bookmarks reading: "Jan. 12 Legislative Elections, please come out and vote."
After receiving the bookmark, a middle-age woman, who did not give her name, challenged the department over its failure to promote the referendums.
"There are also referendum ballots on that day. You should also inform people about the referendums," she said.
Under the one-step voting procedure adopted by the Central Election Commission, voters will receive two ballots for the legislative elections and two referendum ballots upon entering the polling station before casting them into four different boxes.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has launched a campaign to boycott the referendums and has urged voters to refrain from participating in the referendums.
Shrugging off the challenge, Huang Lu said that the key mission of the department was the legislative elections and that electoral announcements had already promoted the referendums.
"We did not ignore the promotion of referendums intentionally. The reason we came out and promoted the legislative elections is to remind voters of their right to vote," she said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (
"We leave it to voters to decide whether to cast referendum ballots. It is the city government' duty not to promote the referendums intentionally and to respect people's decisions," Hau said yesterday during the municipal meeting at Taipei City Hall.
The Referendum Law (
As casting the referendum ballots would be a gesture of support for the referendums, Hau said the city government would not pressure voters one way or another.
"We are maintaining our neutrality by neither promoting referendum voting nor asking voters not to cast their ballots," he said.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s