The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday expressed indignation after the Delphi Economic Forum changed former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) title to the “former leader of Taipei” on its Web site.
The forum’s “deliberate use of a wrong title for former president Ma is profoundly inappropriate and uncourteous” for an organization based in the democratic nation of Greece, Presidential Office spokeswoman Olivia Lin (林聿禪) said.
The event organizers should correct the mistake immediately, Lin said.
Photo: CNA
On Tuesday, the Web site of the Greek forum reapplied the erroneous title for Ma, two days after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested the phrase, which prompted the organizers to recognize him as “former president of Taiwan.”
Ma has an obligation to uphold the nation’s dignity and sovereignty as a former president attending an international forum, Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a news conference in Taipei.
“The forum’s use of the incorrect title was extremely impolite and insulting to Ma, and posed a test of the former president’s character,” Chen said. “I believe most people would not accept the invitation to an event that repeatedly changed their title.”
Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) said on the sidelines of a legislative session that important public figures should refuse to accept belittlement of Taiwan.
If the nation is belittled and efforts to address the issue have been exhausted, then the public figure “will have to make a decision for themselves,” he said.
The ministry on Tuesday conveyed its stern protest to the forum’s organizers, saying that any act by a non-governmental group that debases Taiwan is unacceptable.
Ma should reassess the proprietary of his planned attendance at the forum in light of the organizer’s failure to rectify the incorrect title, the ministry said.
Ma Ying-jeou Foundation executive director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) later on Tuesday said that Ma should not be held responsible for the incompetence of the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) if it is unable to deal with the problem.
“Ma’s responsibility as a private citizen is to create opportunities that would let the world hear the voice of Taiwan,” Hsiao said.
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
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