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DPP is confident of
Hakka vote
CRUCIAL CONSTITUENCY: Party officials say that
they believe Tsai Ing-wen’s Hakka ancestry may help her win the vote in the
vital Hsinchu, Miaoli and Taoyuan districts
By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter, in Taoyuan County
Democratic Progressive Party
Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen waves to supporters as she arrives for a presidential
campaign stop in Hsinchu City yesterday.
Photo: Wang Chin-yi, Taipei Times
As Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) presidential election campaign trip took her to
areas with heavy Hakka populations in northern Taiwan yesterday, the party said
it feels that it has never had as good an opportunity as this year to make
strides in securing Hakka votes in the election.
One of the main reasons for that confidence is that, unlike previous
standard-bearers, Tsai is of Hakka descent.
Tsai said yesterday in Hsinchu, one of the three main Hakka constituencies in
northern Taiwan, along with Miaoli and Taoyuan, that her party planned to
promote the Hakka language and eventually designate it as one of the national
languages if she were elected president in January.
Her 11-day campaign trip along the west coast was approaching Taipei, where the
trip will draw to a close today.
“After a successful campaign in southern Taiwan, people said that I would
receive a lukewarm welcome as the group traveled northward, but I haven’t felt
that,” Tsai told supporters on a campaign stop at Jhongli (中壢), Taoyuan County.
Hakka are the second-largest ethnic group in Taiwan behind Hoklo. According to a
Council of Hakka Affairs survey, 18.1 percent of the nation’s 23 million
nationals, or 4.2 million people, are of Hakka descent.
In past elections, most Hakka in northern Taiwan favored the Chinese Nationalist
Party (KMT). A recent DPP survey shows that it trails by about 10 percent among
Hakka voters in that region.
While Hakka communities in southern Taiwan’s Pingtung and Kaohsiung gave Tsai
and her running mate Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) a warm welcome last week because the
pair hail from Pingtung, the DPP understood that winning Hakka votes in the
north would be a tall order.
Tsai said that the DPP has long been seen as a party dominated by Hoklo people,
which was why it has not been successful in Hakka constituencies in the past.
However, that was probably a wrong perception, because Hoklo people and the DPP
neither ignore nor discriminate against the Hakka, Tsai said.
Speaking in Hsinchu yesterday, Tsai said the Council of Hakka Affairs and the
Hakka TV Service were both founded between 2000 and 2008, when the DPP was in
power. The DPP administration also helped several universities establish
Colleges of Hakka Studies, she added.
Being a Hakka, Tsai said she would like to do more to promote the Hakka language
and culture as well as improving infrastructure in Hakka constituencies.
Earlier in Miaoli, she talked about reviving local economies by developing
industries with local characteristics, such as wood carving. In Hsinchu, she
pledged to make the region, which is already known as Taiwan’s Silicon Valley,
the technology capitol of Taiwan by expanding the size and diversity of the
Hsinchu Science Park.
Although Tsai does not speak fluent Hakka, Hakka people seemed to see her as one
of their own, DPP legislative candidate Yang Chang-cheng (楊長鎮) said.
“It appeared that Hakka women — young and old — felt that they could identify
with Tsai and they believe in her, and maybe that could make a difference in the
election,” said a Tsai campaign adviser, who wished to remain anonymous because
he was not authorized to speak on the matter.
The DPP see the Hakka constituencies as important battlegrounds, with former
Hsinchu County commissioner Lin Kwang-hua (林光華), a Hakka, saying that Taoyuan,
Hsinchu and Miaoli could be the deciding electoral region of January’s
presidential election, despite widespread belief that central Taiwan would be
the game-changer.
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