President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has failed to deliver almost all of his Hakka-related campaign pledges over his three-and-a-half years in office, representatives from various Hakka groups told a press conference yesterday.
Ma, who is seeking re-election in January, has said at his presidential campaign stops that he has carried out all of the pledges he made to Hakka people in his 2008 presidential campaign.
The representatives said otherwise, with Taiwan Hakka Society chairman Chang Yeh-shen (張葉森) saying Ma has not delivered any of his nine pledges and has cheated the Hakka community, making him unqualified for a second term.
According to Yiong Cong-ziin (楊長鎮), the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) legislative candidate in Miaoli County, Ma has not done anything to deliver on his campaign promises: He has not established a national Hakka-language radio station or Hakka culture development areas; he has not recognized the Hakka language as a public language; he has not promoted Taiwan as a global leader of Hakka culture; and he has not enacted laws required for such policies.
“His integrity as a national leader is therefore questionable. He should apologize to the Hakka people,” Yiong said.
Ma also failed to double the budget for Hakka affairs in four years — as he had promised to do, former Hsinchu County commissioner Lin Kwang-hua (林光華), a Hakka, said, adding that this year’s budget was listed at NT$3.2 billion (US$10.5 million) — a 33 percent increase from the 2008 budget of NT$2.4 billion allocated under the previous DPP administration.
The Ma administration spent most of its Hakka budget on media promotion, festivals and activities that were “basically ineffective in promoting Hakka culture,” Taipei Hakka Association of Public Affairs chairman Chen Shih-shan (陳石山) said.
Wen Ming-chung (溫明忠), a professor at National Taiwan Normal University, said the Executive Yuan had scrapped Article 13 of the Hakka Basic Act (客家基本法), which stipulated the establishment of the developmental fund for sectors with Hakka characteristics.
In other words, Wen said, the Ma administration eliminated a regulation that would have helped fulfill Ma’s campaign promise.
The press conference was the second time this month the Hakka community slammed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for what it called failed Hakka policies.
On Nov. 16, leaders from local Hakka groups slammed former KMT chairman Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄) for calling DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) a “pseudo-Hakka” for her lack of Hakka language proficiency and demanded that the KMT apologize for what they said was its past policy of “linguistic genocide.”
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