President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) should rein in Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members who are spreading racist and gender-biased propaganda in a bid to snatch votes for the year-end local elections and support for a controversial trade pact with China, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
Acting DPP Spokesman Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) said at a press conference that the KMT’s Chiayi County branch has been running a “questionable, negative advertisement” insinuating that the DPP nominee in the county commissioner’s race, Chang Hwa-kuan (張花冠), was involved in adulterous relations with the current commissioner, Chen Ming-wen (陳明文).
The ad, which appeared in major Chinese-language newspapers on Thursday, compared the DPP’s decision to nominate Chang, a legislator, to a popular soap opera plot line by saying the party resorted to the “second wife” strategy to secure the seat.
Chang, 55, is the widow of late KMT legislator and prominent businessman Tseng Chen-nung (曾振農). At the announcement of Chang’s nomination, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) praised her for making the transition from the wife of a businessman to a politician.
Both Chen and Chang said yesterday they were prepared to sue their pan-blue rivals for defamation.
“It is regrettable that the KMT has stooped so low this early in the race. But this will not stand in my way of winning the seat,” Chang said.
Calling the KMT’s ad part of a smear campaign, Chao yesterday urged Ma, who doubles as KMT chairman, to stop his party members using “low-class” and discriminatory tactics in the battle for the commissionership.
Chao said that during Ma’s presidential campaign, his supporters had also published several profanely worded ads in publications around the country.
During the presidential campaign of 2007, Ma’s supporters in Kaohsiung draped a giant banner on the side of a building bearing a phrase that used Ma’s last name in an allusion to a swear word. A pan-blue underground radio station at that time also started its show with a jingle making use of what sounded like an obscene phrase.
“Now, as the president, he has allowed the Ministry of Economic Affairs to distribute racist propaganda to boost support for the economic cooperation framework agreement [ECFA] that it wants to sign with Beijing. It is difficult not to suspect that these are all mere reflections of Ma’s real sentiments,” he said.
Chao was referring to a comic strip that the ministry had created to promote the ECFA. The cartoon features two stereotypical characters, Yi-ge (一哥), an ethnic Taiwanese vocational school graduate who opposes the ECFA, and Fa-sao (發嫂), a sharp-minded Hakka career woman who supports the deal.
The DPP last month expressed outrage at the cartoon and demanded that the ministry withdraw it.
Although the ministry has insisted there was nothing wrong with the cartoon and refused to remove it from its Web site, the ministry yesterday released a statement that said it had decided to pull the cartoon.
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