Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) yesterday commended Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member Fan Kang-hao (范綱皓) for apologizing over his comments on social media regarding the age of KMT Culture and Communications Committee director Alicia Wang (王育敏).
In a Facebook post on Monday that has since been deleted, Fan, who is the director of the DPP’s online community center, asked why the KMT Youth Department had chosen “the already 50-year-old Alicia Wang” to model its new jackets.
Fan shared an image of DPP Legislator Lai Pin-yu (賴品妤) and New Frontier Foundation deputy chief executive officer Enoch Wu (吳怡農) posing in jackets released last year by the DPP, and another image of Wang dressed in a KMT-branded jacket, with the phrases “Lai Pin-yu 28 years old” and “Alicia Wang 50 years old” superimposed on the respective images.
Photo: Lee Li-fa, Taipei Times
Beneath both images was the label “young people,” but in Wang’s version the characters were crossed out and replaced with “Auntie?”
Fan wrote that Lai and Wu were representative of the young people within the DPP, and questioned why the KMT did not feature “young people” in its Youth Department photo shoot.
In a Facebook post on Monday evening, Fan apologized for his comments about Wang.
“It is inappropriate to comment on the age of women,” he wrote, pledging to reflect on what happened.
KMT Youth Department director Chen Kuan-an (陳冠安) on Facebook called the limiting of certain clothing to specific people or age groups “a conservative and discriminatory way of thinking.”
“Progressive values do not include age discrimination,” he wrote.
He added that the jackets were to be released by the KMT’s e-commerce center, and not the Youth Department, and described claims that the department did not task young people with promoting the jackets as “fake news” and “misinformation.”
The KMT on Facebook called Fan’s comments “age discrimination” and said that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), as chairperson of the DPP, should place a check on the inappropriate comments.
“We must affirm his brave and responsible performance, because he is different from top DPP officials,” Chiang wrote on Facebook yesterday about Fan’s apology.
While Tsai and Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) have not apologized for allowing imports of US pork containing traces of ractopamine, “Kang-hao’s actions allow us to see a different political scene in Taiwan’s future,” Chiang wrote.
Additional reporting by CNA
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