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Advisers to Hsieh slam KMT taunt

"I didn't know about [the alleged forged list] until I saw it in the newspaper."

Ma Ying-jeou, KMT presidential candidate

Medical advisers to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday fought back over the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) mocking of the advanced age of some of the candidate's advisers.

Janice Chen (陳昭姿), a member of Hsieh's advisory team, said it was regrettable to see how politics had changed Steve Chan (詹啟賢), whose kind nature she said had turned to bitter sarcasm.

Chen was referring to Chan's remarks describing Hsieh's medical advisers as "gray-haired maids in an imperial palace."

Chan is former dean of Chi Mei Hospital and now a top aide of KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

Responding to the complaint that Hsieh had included medical professionals in his advisory team without notifying the individuals concerned, Li Tzu-yao (李鎡堯), one of Hsieh's medical advisers, challenged the KMT to substantiate its claim with evidence.

Li also dismissed criticism that they had switched their political allegiance, saying that national identification was a cardinal issue of right and wrong and that they would not change their political views on a whim.

Li said that medical professionals have developed close relations with the pan-green camp over the years.

At a separate setting yesterday, DPP Secretary-General Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) also criticized the KMT for its "dirty tricks."

Cho was referring to the KMT allegedly adding names of overseas businesspeople in the name list of Ma's New York support group without seeking their consent.

The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) said on Monday that New York Taiwanese Businesspeople Association chairwoman Chang Ya-feng (張亞鳳) had criticized Ma's camp for including her in Ma's list of New York supporters without seeking her consent.

The KMT may have dismissed the incident as a mere mistake, but it made the fabrication sound "so natural," Cho said yesterday.

In response to Hsieh camp accusations that the Ma camp had forged the list of individuals in the medical support group and included foreign Taiwanese businessmen in its list of supporters, Ma said yesterday that his camp would look into the issue.

"I didn't know about it until I saw it in the newspaper," Ma said yesterday while campaigning for KMT legislative candidates in Taoyuan County. "We are looking into the issue and will give an explanation later."

Ma camp spokesman Luo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said that overseas support groups were independently formed and operated by overseas Taiwanese and that the Ma campaign office would ask the support groups to make corrections if there were mistakes in the list.

While the Ma camp said it would look into the matter, the Overseas Ma Ying-jeou-Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) support group posted an apology on its Web site (www.ma2008.org/index.php) on Monday for mistakenly including directors of local Taiwanese businesspeople groups as contractors for the support group.

Commenting on the establishment of Hsieh's medical personnel support group in Taipei on Sunday and the camp's criticism against him for including medical personnel in his support group without seeking their consent, Ma said he understood the pressure put upon some people who offered support to both camps. He did not elaborate.
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