I commented on this story from the Taipei Times a few weeks ago, but there was one thing there I neglected:
[Ma Ying-jeou, the KMT presidential candidate said that if] elected next year,... he would not allow China to demand that the country cover national flags or pictures of Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) during cross-strait exchange events in Taiwan.
"Such incidents happened frequently after the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) came to power. I will not accept it and won't let it happen again if I am elected," he said. [emphasis added]
One of the beauties of blogging is that it can make fact-checking a whole lot easier. No more digging through piles of newspaper clippings - if you blogged on the subject, the post is still waiting for you in black-and-white. And as it so happens, I discussed one of the incidents Ma refers to back in the early days of this blog.
In all honesty, it was kind of a lame entry, so let's go to the original Taipei Times story instead. It was November 15th, 2005, and China's tourism official Shao Qiwei (邵琪偉) had just finished a 10 day visit to Taiwan...
When Shao visited, the KMT pulled pull down the flag of the Republic of China and portraits of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) at facilities he toured -- which DPP officials called a humiliation of the nation's dignity.
Picture this: In 2005, the KMT, under Ma Ying-jeou's chairmanship,* pulled down ROC flags in order to curry favor with a Chinese official. Two years pass, and Ma now pretends he and his party had nothing to do with it - it was obviously somebody ELSE'S fault!
Please, sir - don't insult our intelligence. You DID accept it, and you DID let it happen. The only question now is whether Taiwanese can be trust you not to do it again in the future.
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* According to Wikipedia, Ma Ying-jeou was elected chairman of the KMT on July 16, 2005.
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