A handshake between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) at a New Year’s Day flag-raising ceremony has gone viral online because Ko told reporters that he had been thinking of Ma’s so-called “death grip” during the event.
Ko was among a line of people with whom Ma shook hands before the ceremony on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office Building. However, Ko was holding a miniature Republic of China flag in his right hand — the hand he used to greet the president with a brief clasp.
After the ceremony, reporters asked the mayor what he was thinking during the handshake and why continued holding the flag.
Photo: CNA
“I was thinking about the ‘death-grip handshake (死亡之握)’ and ‘healing hands (回春之手)’; which would get the better of the other?” Ko said, before erupting into laughter.
He added that the flag remained in his hand because he could not shift it to his other quickly enough.
Online commenters started riffing on Ko’s responses, mentioning a so-called “curse of bad luck” said to be associated with shaking hands with the president. Netizens referred to several athletes who they said saw a downturn in their performances after shaking hands with Ma.
In response to the widespread media coverage of the handshake, long-term Ma aide and former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) posted comments on Facebook on Friday and yesterday about the innuendo.
Lo described the “death-grip handshake” as among the most malicious rumors circulated against the president, attributing it to the pan-green political camp and netizens who were “not tenderhearted” enough to sympathize with people who encounter misfortune between three months and a year after interacting with Ma.
Lo said that linking Ma to misfortune not only characterizes the president as a source of bad luck, but also harms society, since it teaches the public to respond to other people’s hardships not with empathy and respect, but to instead use them for political gain.
Lo acknowledged that some commenters might think there is no need to take a joke so seriously, before offering a counterexample involving the opposition and Japan’s 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant disaster.
“Yes, maybe I take it too seriously, but if it is a joke, why not play it on [Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)?” Lo said.
The day that Japan was hit by an earthquake — March 11, 2011 — which triggered a devastating tsunami, was the day that Tsai declared her candidacy for the 2012 presidential election, but no one from the pan-blue camp ever said that there was a link between the two, Lo said.
“That is the biggest difference between the blue and green camps,” he added.
Fu Jen Catholic University assistant professor Chou Wei-hang (周偉航), known online as Ninjia Text (人渣文本), said the “death-grip handshake” theory was just a facetious remark.
Scientifically speaking, it applies to every politician, because politicians shake hands with people all the time, putting the chance of death among people who have shaken hands with politicians above average, Chou said.
Ma had his handshake jokingly dubbed the “death-grip handshake” because he failed to show compassion to people under his governance in the first place, Chou said.
“If this remains unresolved, he will always be the president who people make jokes about,” Chou added.
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