Faced with the public outcry and criticism from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday pulled a cartoon designed to promote a proposed trade agreement with China.
Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) had earlier apologized for the controversy surrounding the cartoon to promote the signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with Beijing.
The ministry said in a statement yesterday that “personnel responsible for the cartoon campaign shall be reprimanded and transferred to other departments.”
Yiin apologized again for the cartoon yesterday, but said he hoped it would not distract from the crucial issue of inking an ECFA with China to aid Taiwan's economic development.
Introduced on July 20, the ECFA cartoon was criticized for ethnic stereotyping. Yi-ge (一哥) was described as a 45-year-old Hoklo-speaking man from Tainan, a vocational school graduate who works as a salesman in an unspecified traditional industry and who knows very little about the ECFA. His counterpart, Fa-sao (發嫂), was described as a 40-year-old Hakka woman from Hsinchu who works as a supervisor in a trading company, is fluent in English, Mandarin, Hoklo and Japanese, and is eager to learn about the ECFA.
Yiin again disassociated himself from the incident, saying he had no knowledge of the development of the two characters as he was attending the APEC meeting in Singapore at the time.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) welcomed the removal of the cartoon, but said the deeper problem was the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) habitual use of negative ads.
Acting DPP Spokesman Chao Tie-lin (趙天麟) alleged that the KMT had a track record of using negative campaigns, ranging from the use of profanity to public defamation. He also criticized Yiin for handing out demerits to officials who oversaw the project.
“On a large-scale project such as the [ECFA] cartoon, entry-level staff have virtually no say in [its creation]. Yiin is the minister and it was his ministry that published the cartoon, which means Yiin should be punished before he starts pointing the finger at others,” Chao said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Thinktank chairman Chen Po-chih (陳博志), who had accused the ministry of fabricating the results of an impact assessment report on the ECFA, yesterday rejected Yiin's demand for an apology and challenged him to an open debate instead.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JENNY W. HSU
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