An announcement by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) that it would set up a Facebook account to promote government policies has come under fire from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which said the timing was suspicious.
The project, which comes with a NT$6 million (US$205,332) price tag, had been put out to a public bid and a company had been found to take charge of the work.
The Web site will be launched after the contract is finalized, the council said.
Council officials said that although Mainland Affairs Council Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) has a personal Facebook page, the Web site maintenance needed its own personnel, adding that though some employees at the council were helping out, senior officials were worried that this could blur the line between private and work-related matters.
The council said Lai’s Facebook page was limited in terms of connection and participation by netizens, and that once the official Facebook site goes online, it would link Lai’s Facebook with the official one.
This would also provide legitimate reasons to allocate resources and manpower to the maintenance of Lai’s site and would help Lai’s popularity on Facebook, the council said.
However, with the council’s Facebook operational timeframe stretching across the presidential election in January, questions have been raised as to whether it would be used to help promote President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election campaign.
Council officials deny such a connection, saying the timeframe was coincidental because of a delay in the bidding, adding that there were no political considerations.
The DPP caucus, however, is not convinced.
The caucus said the council’s advertising budget stood at NT$31 million in 2009, but grew to NT$120 million last year and NT$170 million this year.
Aside from placing advertisements across a variety of platforms, the council was also spending serious money subsidizing legislative assistants to attend classes in the country as well as on official visits to Hong Kong, the caucus said.
The caucus accused the council of not maintaining administrative neutrality, citing incidents of council officials going to pan-blue legislators’ offices and holding meetings with the public.
It also pointed to the posting by Lai on her Facebook page of 18 questions prior to DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) announcement of the “cross-strait” section of her 10-year party guidelines on Aug. 23.
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
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