By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter
Scheduled meetings with UN ambassadors from Taiwan’s allies and a speech on national security by a US delegation from President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election campaign would be highly inappropriate, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
The delegation, whose members include executive director of Ma’s campaign office King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), left Taipei on Friday for a 12-day US trip. The delegation will visit six US cities, including Washington, Boston, New York, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, to boost Ma’s support among overseas Taiwanese ahead of the January presidential election.
Information obtained by the DPP showed that King was scheduled to attend a seminar with UN ambassadors from Taiwan’s diplomatic allies on Wednesday in New York before delivering a speech at Harvard University on “Taiwan’s future and its relations with China” the following day, DPP spokesman Liang Wen-jie (梁文傑) said.
“King is only Ma’s campaign manager and does not hold any public office. In what capacity can King make a speech on national security and foreign affairs for Ma and convene a meeting with ambassadors?” Liang said at a press conference.
“This is a breach of protocol,” he said.
The DPP also panned King for arranging meetings with Taiwanese Major League Baseball players Wang Chien-ming (王建民) and Kuo Hong-chih (郭泓志).
“These tricks show that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is willing to do whatever it takes to win the election,” DPP spokesman Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said.
While the KMT accused former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) of “politicization of sports” for visiting Wang at Yankee Stadium in 2007, DPP spokesman Kang Yu-cheng (康裕成) said Hsieh went as a fan.
Kang criticized what he said was the KMT’s attempt to “shadow” DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) US visit with an almost identical itinerary.
Ma’s re-election campaign office spokesman, Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國), said the delegation was led by Legislative Deputy Speaker Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) to send Ma’s regards to the ambassadors of Taiwan’s allies.
Additional reporting by Wang Yu-chung