The I Want a Good President Alliance yesterday criticized President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for failing to respond to any of its policy questions, which have been posed to the three presidential candidates, and questioned whether Ma really cared about being a good president.
Over the past few months, the alliance, which was formed by several civic groups concerned about issues such as education, unemployment, tax reform and labor rights, has raised questions about different social issues with the aim of providing voters with a reference guide to the candidates’ policies and ideology.
The alliance delivered its questions to Ma, who is running for re-election on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) ticket, Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), who was the last to join the race for the Jan. 14 election.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
However, alliance members are not happy that Ma and Soong had not responded to any of their questions and specifically condemned Ma because he is the incumbent.
“The Presidential Office took our questions and said it would pass them on to the KMT for further review, but we never heard anything back,” alliance spokesperson Chien Hsi-chieh said. “I wonder if Ma cares about being a good president, as he has promised.”
The alliance said Tsai answered each of the questions, though members were not fully satisfied with her responses.
For instance, regarding unemployment, alliance member Tsai Ya-ting (蔡雅婷) said the solutions proposed by Tsai Ing-wen were mostly about making changes that would have an impact on workers, without talking about how to make changes to the system.
“I think she’s a bit too favorable to businesses,” Tsai Ya-ting said.
Regarding childcare, Pan Hsin-jung (潘欣榮) praised Tsai Ing-wen for wanting to create government-run daycare centers, “but she did not specify how her ideas would be implemented.”
The alliance said they would continue to contact Ma and Soong, and hoped to receive their responses by next Monday.
“We hope to gather all their responses and continue to follow up with what they do and say during the presidential campaign,” alliance member Chen Fang-yu (陳方隅) said. “We will then publish a voters’ handbook a week before the election so that voters can learn what each candidate thinks about different social issues, and take it as a reference when they cast their votes.”
“Politicians should know that voters will actually judge them by what they say, what they do and what they think about different social issues,” Chen said.
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