“I went to Kaohsiung by the first train the next day … Besides, [August 8] was Father’s Day,” Hsueh said. “It’s Father’s Day. We left the hotel right away after the dinner. Come on. Was it that unreasonable that we had dinner out on Father’s Day?”
Liu’s office declined to comment on Lin’s remarks yesterday, but the office’s Ting Nai-chi (丁乃琪) was quoted by the Chinese-language **China Times** yesterday as saying: “Wasn’t [he] allowed to have his hair cut? What kind of world is this?”
Chiu’s office, meanwhile, issued a statement saying that Lin’s allegation was not true.
At a press conference yesterday afternoon, Ma came to Liu’s defense and said it was a regular appointment for a haircut.
Liu was not present at the press conference.
Chiu, who sat next to Ma, dismissed the accusations concerning him as “completely false,” adding that he has been working hard at the disaster response center since the typhoon struck and that he didn’t even have time for breakfast yesterday.
Ma told the press conference that he and Liu had come to an agreement that punishments would not be meted out until early next month because the first priority was disaster relief and they did not want to damage morale during the relief effort.
Ma said the government was determined to find out why the public thought the government had reacted too slowly to the emergency. If any government official was found to have made careless mistakes, they should take the political and administrative responsibility, he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY KO SHU-LING AND FLORA WANG
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