President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday accused the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of fabricating the market price of locally grown fruit as part of a negative campaign against his administration and urged the DPP to stop its smear campaign strategies.
While campaigning for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative candidates in Hsinchu County, Ma said the DPP’s latest campaign fliers — featuring the average price of locally grown fruit — showed that the DPP was a degenerating party that was hurting farmers by spreading rumors about how much fruit should cost.
“The DPP looked down on the price of local fruit and claimed that the price of bananas and persimmons was NT$2 per half kilogram. I am used to the DPP’s smear campaigns against me, but it should not hurt local farmers,” he said when campaigning for KMT Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) in Hsinchu.
The campaign flier, designed as a monthly calendar featuring 12 fruits and their market price per half-kilogram, says that the low prices, from NT$2 to NT$5, reflect poor agricultural policies that create hardship for farmers.
Ma yesterday dismissed the accusations and said information from the Council of Agriculture (COA) showed that the average market price for persimmons, for example, is about NT$30 to NT$45 per half-kilogram and the price of other fruits is also much higher than the DPP said.
“The DPP fabricated the price of fruit for its election campaign purposes, but this will only hurt farmers who as wholesalers would try to lower the price, too. This is an unethical move,” he said.
Ma also once again denied meeting with bookmaker Chen Ying-chu (陳盈助) and lashed out at the DPP for its ambiguous stance on party members’ meetings with Chen.
Chen has been in the headlines because of an alleged meeting with Ma in September.
As the DPP criticized Ma for meeting with an alleged gangster and asking for political donations, DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) on Friday acknowledged knowing Chen Ying-chu, and described him as a “good guy.”
Ma said Chen Min-wen’s comments showed the DPP adopted double standards for its members’ behaviors and for the KMT.
Ma yesterday campaigned in Hsinchu County to consolidate support for the Jan. 14 presidential and legislative elections from Hakka constituencies. He later attended the KMT’s 112th anniversary celebration in Greater Taichung.
Addressing the celebration, Ma called for party unity ahead of the elections and promised to devote more effort to developing central areas of Taichung, Changhua and Nantou if re-elected.
At a separate setting yesterday, DPP Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) responded to Ma’s criticism of the DPP’s fliers, saying that it is true that the average price of agricultural products this year is low and that the price noted by the COA could be the wholesale price and not the retail price.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching