Lee owes public an apology
Lee Chia-fen (李佳芬), the wife of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, has been traveling far and wide to drum up support for her husband’s campaign. These meetings and rallies should be a great opportunity to educate the public, but unfortunately they have sunk to the level of relay stations for spreading false information about gender equality education.
Local media cited Lee as saying at a meeting in Pingtung County that a parent had sent her a video showing third-graders being taught about anal sex, while sixth-graders were learning about orgasms. Lee harshly criticized the government for failing in its responsibility to check the quality of education.
However, these kinds of malicious rumors have been doing the rounds since last year, when there was a referendum about gender equality education, and the Ministry of Education has repeatedly refuted the rumors.
On this occasion, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) held a news conference, at which he turned the pages of the textbooks to show that they included no such content.
It is regrettable that Lee, as a key figure in Han’s campaign team, could so easily believe an alarmist video sent to her by one or more parents, and then go on to announce these things at a public event without checking the facts or consulting the related educational departments.
To do such a thing is ignorant, heartless and totally unacceptable. As well as impeding teachers’ hard work, Lee’s statements dragged down her style and took Han’s “country bumpkin” image to an extreme.
It seems that Han’s team cannot distinguish true from false. It simply parrots whatever it hears and lets fake news go to its head. How can such a team hope to persuade people to vote for its candidate?
There is both true and false news on the Internet, but it is not very hard to check the facts.
It is sad to see Han’s team, which says that it wants to win votes from young people, misleading the public with the sort of untrue rumors about gender equality that young people really despise. What can people do but shake their heads in dismay?
Lee, please listen. Stop talking nonsense. What you said about gender equality education is wrong. The best thing you can do now is hurry up and say sorry.
Pan Kuan
New Taipei City
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