The close race between the two Taipei mayoral candidates has prompted the two camps to largely abandon traditional hard-line campaign strategies and de-emphasize party loyalty for the purpose of attracting support from swing voters, as the election looms in less than 10 days.
Both Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) so far this month have refrained from holding large-scale campaign events to consolidate their base. Instead, they have filled daily schedules with visits to local districts to interact with residents.
For Hau, who has always been awkward expressing himself in public, communicating with voters face-to-face has not been his forte. To help him enhance his connection with voters, the KMT has arranged for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who doubles as the KMT chairman, and KMT -Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), to accompany Hau he intensively canvass the streets this month looking for support.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Last week alone, Ma campaigned for the mayor on three consecutive days. He spent more than two hours at the Raohe Street night market on Saturday night, leading Hau to shake hands with visitors, and sat down chatting with vendors while eating stinky tofu.
The 58-year-old mayor has also learned to stay and chat with the crowd when attending municipal activities, rather than leaving immediately after addressing the events.
Although the KMT is holding a rally on Sunday for Hau, it is playing down its previous campaign theme of anti-corruption in response to former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) most recent sentence of a total of 19 years of for corruption charges, and the KMY is turning it into a carnival-like event.
King said the rally, named “A Walk for -Taipei-Taipei Flies High,” will be filled with balloons and toys, and all of Taipei’s residents are welcome to share their thoughts about the city’s future.
The new strategy to tone down the traditional “deep-blue” rhetoric in Hau’s election campaign can also be found in his latest campaign ad, in which he carries a girl on his back wearing a pink T-shirt. The KMT’s blue party color was absent in the ad.
Su, on the other hand, has been leading a non-traditional campaign since the very beginning. With the slogan “Let Taipei surpass Taipei,” his campaign has focused more on social welfare issues and has adopted bright colors such as orange and pink for his campaign.
He has made use of popular online social networking services like Facebook and Plurk to discuss municipal issues and has replaced large-scale campaign activities with hip-hop concerts and “living room meetings” in all of the city’s 12 districts, where local residents have been invited to share their concerns with him.
As a seasoned politician who has maintained a grassroots style, Su interacts with voters more passionately than his KMT counterpart and never hesitates to shake hands or give hugs to supporters.
Su’s campaign spokesman Lee Hou-ching (李厚慶) said reshaping the political alignment in Taipei City, a traditional KMT stronghold, is a main reason behind Su’s decision to run in the election.
The increasing number of swing voters in this election campaign, Lee said, showed that the traditional support bases of the pan-blue and pan-green camps in the city can be changed.
Hong Kong-based American singer-songwriter Khalil Fong (方大同) has passed away at the age of 41, Fong’s record label confirmed yesterday. “With unwavering optimism in the face of a relentless illness for five years, Khalil Fong gently and gracefully bid farewell to this world on the morning of February 21, 2025, stepping into the next realm of existence to carry forward his purpose and dreams,” Fu Music wrote on the company’s official Facebook page. “The music and graphic novels he gifted to the world remain an eternal testament to his luminous spirit, a timeless treasure for generations to come,” it said. Although Fong’s
China’s military buildup in the southern portion of the first island chain poses a serious threat to Taiwan’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, a defense analyst warned. Writing in a bulletin on the National Defense and Security Research’s Web site on Thursday, Huang Tsung-ting (黃宗鼎) said that China might choke off Taiwan’s energy supply without it. Beginning last year, China entrenched its position in the southern region of the first island chain, often with Russia’s active support, he said. In May of the same year, a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) force consisting of a Type 054A destroyer, Type 055 destroyer,
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was questioned by prosecutors for allegedly orchestrating an attack on a taxi driver after he was allegedly driven on a longer than necessary route in a car he disliked. The questioning at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office was ongoing as of press time last night. Police have recommended charges of attempted murder. The legally embattled actor — known for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代) — is under a separate investigation for allegedly using fake medical documents to evade mandatory military service. According to local media reports, police said Wang earlier last year ordered a
Taiwan is planning to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based X-ray imaging to customs clearance points over the next four years to curb the smuggling of contraband, a Customs Administration official said. The official on condition of anonymity said the plan would cover meat products, e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, large bundles of banknotes and certain agricultural produce. Taiwan began using AI image recognition systems in July 2021. This year, generative AI — a subset of AI which uses generative models to produce data — would be used to train AI models to produce realistic X-ray images of contraband, the official
RSS