President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) campaign office spokesman yesterday invited the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to a debate on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) amid recent disputes over his performance in an earlier debate on the issue.
Ma’s campaign office spokesman Yin Wei (殷瑋), who was accused of opposing the economic pact despite being Ma’s spokesman, called for a “rational debate” with the DPP to defend his stance on the issue.
“If the DPP cares so much about my stance on the ECFA, I am willing to engage in a rational debate with them on the subject as president Ma’s campaign office spokesman,” he told a press conference.
Yin’s move came amid recent disputes over his stance on the ECFA following reports about his participation in a debate on ECFA last year, in which he debated the negative aspects of the economic pact.
He also accused the DPP of spreading disinformation to the two TV stations that reported the story — FTV and SET and urged the DPP to focus its presidential campaign on discussions of campaign platforms, instead of smear campaigns.
At a separate setting yesterday, DPP officials suggested they would respectfully decline Yin’s offer of debate, calling the challenge a distraction from “real issues on the campaign trial” by an official seeking to enhance his public profile.
“I think that debate over future national policy should be held between the two presidential -candidates — not by a spokesperson or some other staffer. There’s no reason why the DPP has to respond,” said Lee Cheng-yi (李政毅), the DPP youth department director. “I’m sure that Yin has already succeeded in what he set out to do, that is drive up his own position within the KMT.”
Yin and Lee clashed earlier when Yin accused Lee of feeding FTV and SET false information. Lee replied that Ma’s spokesman needed to back up his allegations with evidence and yesterday accused Yin of “attempting to change the focus.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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