Hackneyed insults unwanted
Not long ago, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential and vice presidential candidates, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), were interviewed by KMT Taipei City Councilor Chung Pei-chun (鍾沛君). When defending Hou during the interview, Jaw was a little too excited and went so far as to say that “People in the south [of Taiwan] are straightforward, so children having an argument might get into a [physical] fight easily when being inflamed by others. Taipei people like to argue while people in the south like to fight. Really!”
Such a statement is controversial.
I can only sigh: Jaw is doing it again. He is either agitating the ancestral origin sentiment or provoking ethnic and regional confrontation. When running for Taipei mayor as the New Party’s candidate in 1994, Jaw and his camp said that if Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) mayoral candidate Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) were elected, he might immediately force all Chinese mainlanders in Taiwan to jump into the Tamsui River (淡水河).
Jaw once even claimed that if the DPP gained power, the Republic of China was likely to perish. Such claims, of course, were absurd. Surprisingly, three decades later, he is still up to his same old tricks.
In comparison, Taiwanese entertainer Rainie Yang (楊丞琳) recently joked at a show that people from China’s Henan Province like to cheat, and was strongly pressured online by Chinese people to publicly apologize. As a candidate for Taiwan’s “alternate” head of state, should Jaw not issue a public apology for causing a confrontation between the north and the south of the country?
I am not saying that Jaw’s speech should be censored, nor am I encouraging people to criticize him on social media. He must have heard a lot of complaints by now, and should at least try to look back on his own behavior. We are living in the 21st century — does he really want to play this kind of unclassy and distasteful campaign trick in today’s social atmosphere? If the vice presidential candidate wants to lose more votes, then he should just continue what he is doing.
Victor Hung
Taichung
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