KMT Legislator Yu Yueh-hsia (
"Spinster is a good term that means to compliment a woman who's over 30 and not yet married," Yu said yesterday. "The term means that the woman still upholds her virginity."
Yu's apology came a day after the legislature voted to refer the incident to the Discipline Committee for possible punishment.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"It is regrettable that the whole event has turned into a political fiasco. The KMT has admitted defeat. I give up," Yu said.
But she stuck to her contention that she had said nothing offensive.
"Spinster is a good word," she said. "I will never apologize for having used that word."
Upset over the government's apparent intransigence in establishing direct links with China, 43-year-old Yu last Friday said that Tsai lacked experience with men and therefore couldn't understand "linking" between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
At yesterday's press conference, Yu explained that she called Tsai "spinster" because she thought Tsai, the nation's top China-policy planner, was being conceited and had allowed her political ideology to impede cross-strait policies.
"I thus called her `spinster,' but it was not meant as malicious invective," she said.
Before the legislature voted on referring the case for punishment, Yu had threatened to quit the KMT if her party's caucus agreed to the move. She said nothing more about this threat yesterday.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday that the Cabinet refused to accept derogatory remarks by lawmakers.
"I feel sorry about what happened, with a lawmaker violating legislative rules to unleash vicious verbal attacks against government officials," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (
Yu made the remark yesterday morning during the weekly closed-door Cabinet affairs meeting.
In related news, DPP Legislator Tsai Chi-fang (
Tsai was overheard telling a colleague that he wanted to experience "what Independent Legislator Sisy Chen (
(additional reporting by Ko Shu-ling)
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