Taipei Times
Date: Feb 20, 2018
By: Sean Lin / Staff reporter
Miao Po-ya (苗博雅) and Jennifer Lu (呂欣潔), members of a “third force” political party
Social Democratic Party members Jennifer Lu, left, and Miao Po-ya pose in Taipei in March 2015. Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
— meaning they are not part of the pan-green or pan-blue camps — have thrown their hats in the ring for year-end Taipei city councilor election, with both saying they are open to the idea of teaming up with other third-force party candidates to minimize the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) hold on Taipei.
Despite being defeated in 2016’s legislative elections, when they ran for seats in Taipei, both have remained active in public affairs, with Miao being a political columnist for Chinese-language newspaper the Apple Daily and a talk show host and political commentator on Yahoo TV, and Lu as a former director at Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Su Chia-hui’s (蘇巧慧) office and the convener for the same-sex union advocacy group Marriage Equality General Platform.
For the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 24, Miao and Lu have been nominated by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) — a center-left political party founded by veteran social campaigners after the 2014 Sunflower movement — to run for city councilor candidates in Taipei’s Daan (大安)-Wenshan (文山) and Songshan (松山)-Xinyi (信義) constituencies respectively.
Daan-Wenshan is widely viewed as a KMT stronghold, with the pan-blue camp occupying eight out of 12 city councilor seats in the constituency before the death of then-Taipei city councilor Lee Hsin (李新) last year. [FULL STORY]
