With Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) falling behind in various polls, it has been rumored that the KMT is planning to punish Clara Chou (周玉蔻), a radio host and KMT member, for her frequent criticisms of the candidate.
Sources said Chou’s unrelenting attack against Lien — from accusing him of attending a Playboy bunny party in the US and calling his law degree from Columbia University a product of family donation to her recent derision of his running for office as “a high-end finance management plan” — has prompted many KMT members to call on the party headquarters to take disciplinary action against her.
“I cannot imagine a comrade lambasting her fellow party members like this. Many members can no longer put up with it,” KMT Taipei chapter director Chung Tse-liang (鍾則良) said.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
The sources said that the party is now collecting data and once the process is done, Chou’s case would be handed over to the KMT Central Evaluation and Discipline Committee for an adjudication. Expulsion from the party would be the gravest possible punishment, they said.
In response, Chou said Lien should be the first to be expelled if the KMT is to expel anybody for criticizing the party. Chou said Lien panned President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who also serves as KMT chairman, with the sarcastic statement: “We are not living in Ming Dynasty,” in reference to Ma’s conflict with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) in September last year.
Chou said that Lien also claimed — with what Chou characterized as a condemning undertone — that if the economy is bad, then whoever wins the election could be none other than a head of a group of beggars.
Chou said that if criticizing fellow party members is any standard, KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾), who often castigates the party publicly on TV, would have been fired at least a hundred times.
Chou said she suspected that calling for disciplinary action was a tactic from Lien’s campaign team, so it could have a scapegoat to lay blame on if Lien loses the election.
“Who am I to take such responsibility?” she asked.
She added that what she has said in media appearances is true: The Playboy party incident was corroborated by lawyer Song Yao-ming (宋耀明), the red wine case — in which it was revealed Lien had shared a NT$200,000 bottle of red wine at a party without hesitation — was reported by Chinese-language Global News Monthly and the claim that Lien made a false property declaration was based on a Control Yuan report.
She said she had suggested a change of candidate “for the party’s sake,” since Lien would definitely lose the election.
“They would not listen to me then and now they want to shift the blame to me, ” she said.
Chou herself ran for Taipei mayor in 2006 as an independent.
Meanwhile, Lien’s campaign camp is fretting over its strategies constantly being leaked and is said to have fired a campaign propaganda team member responsible.
Propaganda team leader Jack Yu (游梓翔), a former Taipei official responsible for information affairs, was also said to have been fired for his slow action on initiating outreach efforts.
In response to the news about sacking Yu, KMT Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元), who serves as Lien’s campaign director, said it was because Yu has a research project abroad and needs to leave the nation for seven weeks, adding that Yu has been replaced by spokesperson Chin Hui-yuan (秦蕙媛).
Tsai added that he has not heard of a propaganda team member being fired.
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