Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) seems to be in deep water lately. An opinion poll released by online news outlet My-Formosa.com shows that while Vice President William Lai (賴清德) continues to lead with 35.3 percent, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) has climbed back to second place with 18.8 percent, surpassing Ko’s 15.1 percent.

Yet, the drop in ranking is nothing compared with Ko’s plummeting support among young people, an age group considered Ko’s “iron base.” For the first time, Lai has a much higher support rate in the 20-29 age group with 43.3 percent than Ko’s 27.7 percent; Ko only surpassed Lai by 4 percent in the 30-39 age group.

Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp (高端疫苗), the manufacturer of the only domestically made COVID-19 vaccine to have received emergency use authorization in Taiwan, recently announced its out-licensing agreement with the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) hosted by the WHO and the UN-backed Medicine Patent Pool.

This is the first time that a vaccine manufacturer will use C-TAP to offer its patent and know-how for a COVID-19 vaccine, which should have cleared Medigen’s name after the slander and criticisms hurled at it by opposition parties over the past two years. As it is now election campaign season, opposition parties have focused their fire on criticizing the governing party, yet none of them have offered any constructive policies of their own. Their efforts of casting aspersions at Medigen should have taught them that such behavior would only get them so far in terms of garnering votes. Instead, they should turn to introducing policies for the following issues, as they are pressing challenges that await Taiwan’s next president: