President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday urged the public to “understand and tolerate” the sexual orientation of presidential candidates, adding that this was an issue of personal privacy.
As sexual preference formed part of an individual’s right to privacy, Ma said, “We should treat this as an issue of human rights and culture. We should respect an individual’s privacy.”
Ma made the remarks during a chat with local media at the Presidential Office.
Ma said he was the first mayor in Taiwan who earmarked a budget to organize activities for homosexual groups. While Hamburg, Germany, began to do so in 2000, Ma said he beat the city by a year.
Former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Shih Ming-teh (施明德) came under fire last week for questioning the sexual orientation of DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is single.
Shih claimed voters deserved “a clear answer” on her sexual orientation before voting for her.
Human rights and women’s groups responded by saying that the sexual orientation of a presidential candidate would not have an impact on the direction of national policy and that people should focus on the public aspects of politicians’ lives rather than their private lives.
Asked about a possible running mate, Ma said his party had yet to nominate a presidential candidate and that it would not officially announce the candidates for -president and vice president until they have been approved by the party’s national congress.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), of which Ma is chairman, plans to hold its national congress in Taichung on June 25, when it is expected to approve the nomination of Ma as its presidential candidate.
On the decriminalization of having misused special allowance funds for local government chiefs, Ma said his former secretary when he was mayor, Yu Wen (余文), was “unlucky” to have been sentenced to a year in jail over the use of the mayoral special allowance fund.
Wu was found guilty of graft in August 2007 and sentenced to 14 months for using fraudulent receipts to claim reimbursements from Ma’s special mayoral allowance.
Prosecutors had charged that with Yu’s help, Ma embezzled more than NT$12 million (US$366,000) from the fund. However, Ma was found not guilty, while Yu was found to have mishandled receipts. Yu served nine months in jail, before resuming work at the Taipei City Government in August 2009.
To decriminalize the acts of other politicians charged with the same crime, the legislature’s Finance Committee on Monday approved a preliminary review of an amendment to the Accounting Act (會計法) which would legalize the use of special allowance funds by government chiefs and deputy chiefs up until the end of 2006.
The draft amendment could be put to a second and third reading by the legislature by the end of this month.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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