TAKING AIM:A spokesperson for one of the organizations that helped found the new headquarters said it has already targeted the KMT’s three worst incumbent lawmakers

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 23, 2015
By Stacy Hsu and Chang An-chiao  /  Staff reporters

A group of activist organizations yesterday established a “Headquarters for Voting

Supporters of Taiwan’s first Headquarters for Voting Out Candidates yesterday march through the streets of New Taipei City. Photo: Chang An-chiao, Taipei Times

Out Candidates” (落選總部) in New Taipei City, announcing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative candidates Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井), Chang Ching-chung (張慶忠) and Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) as their primary targets.

The headquarters — on Jingping Road in the city’s Jhonghe District (中和) — was jointly founded by four activist groups, including The People Rule, the Taiwan March, the Appendectomy Project and the Congressional Investigation Corps.

“Last year’s Appendectomy Project recall campaign, which was aimed at ousting unqualified legislators, successfully prompted the second recall referendum in the nation’s history,” Appendectomy Project spokesperson Lin Zu-yi (林祖儀) said at the headquarters’ launch ceremony.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2015-11-20
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Communication between Taiwan and China will continue

No vacuum in contacts with China: Tsai. Central News Agency

next year despite the long period between the presidential election and the inauguration, said Democratic Progressive Party candidate Tsai Ing-wen.

The opposition leader, who is likely to win the election according to most polls held over the past months, was referring to the period between the presidential and legislative elections on January 16 and the official swearing-in on May 20.

There will be no empty period as far as cross-straits issues and relations between Taiwan and China are concerned, Tsai said in a media interview held Thursday evening. Her comments were interpreted as a sign that the DPP was willing to talk to leading figures in China following the election.     [FULL  STORY]

Can the NPP transform the island’s youth movement into something lasting?

Foreign Policy
Date: November 19, 2015
By: Lorand C. Laskai

TAIPEI — Early on the morning of Nov. 4, the day after news leaked in early November that Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou would meet his mainland Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, the first meeting of its kind in more than 60 years, members of the newly-formed New Power Party (NPP) staged a protest in front of Taiwan’s legislature. “Ma has no authority to represent our people at this meeting,” Huang Kuo-chang, a 42-year-old law professor turned activist, yelled over a microphone, as young volunteers behind him held a banner that read “Recall Ma Ying-jeou.”

The NPP marks an attempt to channel into an electable political platform the energy and frustration of youthful activists that came to political consciousness under the Ma administration. Over the last eight years, the Kuomintang (KMT) government under Ma has steered the self-governing island of 23 million closer to China, which lists reunification with Taiwan among the mainland’s core interests. Ma’s policy stands at odds with growing fear of mainland Chinese influence, and is a major factor in his abysmal approval ratings. Last year, during the Sunflower movement, students and activists, including Huang, occupied Taiwan’s legislature in protest of a controversial trade pact with China. Now, activists like Huang that have opposed Ma’s Beijing-friendly agenda on the streets are trying something new: running for legislative seats.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date:  Nov 20, 2015
By: Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

Becoming a “digital nation” and an “intelligent island” is the Democratic

Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen, center, poses for a photo with Taichung Deputy Mayor Chang Kuang-yao, second right, Keelung Mayor Lin Yu-chang, second left, and high-ranking representatives from Cisco Systems at a ceremony held yesterday in Taipei. Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times

Progressive Party’s (DPP) development blueprint for the nation to enhance competition, the party’s presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday.

At a ceremony in Taipei celebrating the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Taichung, Keelung City and Cisco Systems to create “smart city” solutions in the two cities, Tsai illustrated her policy of maintaining Taiwan’s “speed in progress” by analyzing information in the era of the “Internet of Things (IoT)” and “Internet of Everything.”

In partnership with Cisco, Taichung will focus on building a smart public transportation network, a Taichung official said.     [FULL

  STORY]