Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday criticized President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) attempt in his Double Ten National Day address to explain how he has been “misunderstood” as an example of how the president is disconnected from the public.
Tsai received a warm welcome on arriving at a Ko (柯) and Tsai (蔡) joint family reunion in Taipei, with participants turning away from an ancestor worship ritual to shake hands and take pictures with her.
However, the atmosphere became more serious when Tsai was asked to comment on Ma’s speech on Saturday, in which he said he has done much to improve cross-strait relations and bring about positive changes to Taiwan, but is often misunderstood.
“[When] a president who has been in power for more than seven years feels that the public has a number of misunderstandings about him, spending so much time explaining during a celebration in which he participated as president for the last time, I think it shows one thing — there is a really big gap between how the president thinks and how the public thinks,” Tsai said.
In response to questions regarding if she sang the words “our party” when the national anthem was played during the Double Ten National Day celebration outside the Presidential Office Building in Taipei on Saturday, Tsai only said she took part as the chairperson of the DPP and sang the national anthem because she wanted to promote national solidarity, declining to go into a detailed discussion about what she sang.
Regarding DPP caucus whip Tsai Chi-chang’s (蔡其昌) suggestion to change the words “our party” to “our people,” Tsai said: “It is not the most important thing for us to do.”
When asked about Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who is likely to be replaced at an upcoming KMT extraordinary national congress, Tsai said she feels that Hung has recently suffered significantly, and wished that Hung would cheer up.
At a separate event yesterday afternoon, Tsai met with a US Republic National Committee delegation headed by its chairman, Reince Priebus, at DPP headquarters.
The two sides exchanged views on Taiwan’s presidential election in January, Taiwan-US relations, economic development, youth employment and long-term care issues, officials said.
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