KMT Chairman Wu Avoids Acknowledging Ma as President

In a presidential election, people cast
votes to elect a President, not a Mr.

In the opening ceremony of The 3rd Cross-Strait Hakka Summit Forum (第三屆海峽兩岸客家高峰論壇) yesterday, KMT's Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) gave a speech, in which he called Ma Ying-jeou "Mr. Ma," avoiding the fact that Ma was elected the President.

Wu said in his speech,

"Mr. Ma Ying-jeou sent a a congratulatory telegram. Not only so, Mr. Ma wanted I to express the most sincere welcome for him."

The forum is held in Taiwan but, among its ~500 attendees, there are some 150 scholars from China.

According to the Liberty Times (中國客前 吳伯雄稱總統馬先生), Wu's behavior is suspected as lowering self-esteem in front of Chinese.

But this is not new. Even Mr. Ma himself would do such a thing. Prior to the visit of Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman from China, last November, Ma suggested that Chen can call him "Mr. Ma" without the acknowledgement of his title.

They all forgot a very important issue.

When people go to the voting booths to vote for a president, they give their power to a candidate through the process of giving him/her the title of President.

That is, the power of a President comes with the title. One cannot claim the power of a president without acknowledging the President title. That's the contract signed between the candidate and the people.

It's a very simple common sense that doesn't need much IQ to understand:

• You cannot exercise the power of an attorney without having a title of lawyer
• You don't have the right of a Mayor if you give up the title of Mayor
• You cannot arrest people in the name of law without acknowledging the title of policeman/woman
• etc, etc ...

Similarly, when you fail to acknowledge the title of President given by the people, you no longer have the right to represent the people as a President.

Some intelligent people in KMT doesn't seem to understand this common sense.

But, hey, come to think of it --- maybe deep down Wu Poh-hsiung doesn't really want to call Mr. Ma President (~~~ hint hint ~~~). Who knows ?

Poll Shows Ma's China Approach Is Overwhelmingly Unsupported by the People

China insists that the One China Principle -- (1) There's only one China; (2) This China is PROC; (3) Taiwan is part of China -- is the precondition to sign any agreement with Taiwan.

Ma Ying-jeou insists -- against the view of whole world -- that the term "China" refers to the ROC, the current government in Taiwan, but not PROC.

No matter what, both China and Ma agree with the concept of "one-China", and Taiwan is not a state of her own but just part of that one-China.

Never have we heard that Ma opposes the One China Principle. There's no doubt that he wouldn't hesitate to sign any agreement with China under the premise of One China Principle.

Recently, Ma has repeatedly claimed that the ECFA between Taiwan and China has already been decided (勢在必行, which means "must be done". Google with these keywords: 馬英九 ECFA 勢在必行) and he will not accept a referendum be held over it because (1) we can't run a referendum on every single subject (TT interview) and (2) it has already got the support of majority in Taiwan.

Taiwanese never ask to hold the referendum on every single subject. Ma's excuse is simply a ridiculous generalization to hide his anti-democracy mindset. (Michael's)

And the claim of majority support doesn't come close either.

A poll announced yesterday shows that 80.2% of Taiwanese oppose ECFA, or similar economic agreement, under one-china framework.

Ma Ying-jeou also strongly opposes the idea that the ECFA has to be approved by the Legislative Yuan before signing. He insists on signing it first, then send the signed agreement to Legislative Yuan for "review."

He argues that under his administration any agreement signed with China will not take effect if it is not approved by the LY.

That's an out right lie.

Just 4 months ago, Chiang-Chen Agreement (江陳協議), the agreement signed with China without the approval of LY, took effect "automatically" in December 13th. It wasn't even reviewed by the LY (江陳會協議交協商 今自動生效).

That is, the agreement took effect behind people's back -- without any review by the people, let alone an approval.

If Ma "respects people's opinion" as he honey-tongues repeatedly, and sincerely thinks that LY should be the guard to any agreement his government signs with China, then why does he insists on signing it first before sending it to the LY ?

It seems that Ma Ying-jeou is again playing the same trick of "automatically taking effect" as that in the Chiang-Chen Agreement case in order to avoid the monitoring of ECFA by Taiwan people.

But this time, the people might not cut him a slack. The aforementioned poll shows that as much as 89.2% think that the ECFA should be discussed and monitored by LY before it is signed. This high rate is non-partisan -- even 88% of pro-blue supporters disagree with Ma's tactic.

On the ECFA referendum issue, the poll result also slaps Ma on the face -- 63.5 % think that the ECFA should be decided by a referendum.

Check out how far Ma Ying-jeou goes into the la la land from the entire poll shown below. Any error in translation is on me.

Poll on Ma Ying-jeou's China approach (Mar 13, 2009) Note: the right column (in blueish background) represents Ma Ying-jeou's position on cross-Strait issues.
1. Know about CECA/ECFA	Yes: 44.1%	No: 44.7% (Never heard: 11.2%)
2. If Taiwan doesn't strengthen the economic cooperation with China, will Taiwan be excluded by the international economy and trade community ?	No: 56.8%	Yes: 37.6%
3. Will further economic cooperation with China make Taiwan over-dependent in China and jeopardize Taiwan's autonomy?	Yes:	No:
All	48.8%	43.3%
Pro-blue	32%	63%
Pro-green+non-partisan	77%	(n/a)
4. Are you worried that the cross-Strait economic cooperation will bring large influx of low-cost daily and agriculture products, causing negative effects on Taiwan's traditional business or even unemployment?	Yes: 70.7%	No: 27.4%
5. Should the ruling party discuss with the opposition parties to get consensus before negotiating issues like CECA/ECFA with China ?	Yes: 78.2%	No: 17.8%
6. Should the CECA/ECFA be discussed and monitored by the Legislative Yuan before it is signed ?	Yes:	No:
All	89.2%	6.7%
Pro-blue	88.0%	(n/a)
7. Agree that signing CECA/ECFA might involve in the sovereignty, so should be determined by a referendum ?	Yes: 63.8%	No: 32.3%
8. Have the confidence that Ma's government is capable of standing up for Taiwan's rights and interests in cross-Strait negotiations?	No: 53.6%	Yes: 41.3%
9. Can accept the signing of economic cooperation agreements with China under the precondition of "One China Principle"? (Note: The trend of response is the same for non-partisan, green and blue)	No: 80.2%	Yes: 13.3%
10. Should the economy and trade cooperation with China be moderately controlled, or should all restrictions be lifted?	Moderate Control: 81.7%	All lifted: 12.8%
Source: DPP's announcement on 3/13/09, "81.7%民眾認為兩岸經貿應適度管制 馬政府必須正視人民的聲音" (Translated to English by Taiwan_Echo)

Note: Check out Tim Maddog's recent post on a poll (Ma Ying-jeou's spokesman distorts the truth) that shows how Ma's government cheats her people by advocating Taiwanese opinion that is completely opposite to the reality.

Evaluation Suggests to Postpone Kinmen-Xiamen Bridge Proposal

(following a-gu's post about the bridge)

Building a Kinmen-Xiamen Bridge (KXB), a bridge to connect Kinmen and China land, is one of Ma Ying-jeou's presidential campaign promises (like the 633 promise that he ditched after he got elected).

In a commemorative assembly for the 50th anniversary of 823 Artillery Bombardment (八二三砲戰) in August last year (2008), Ma Ying-jeou announced a plan to build such a bridge. He instructs Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research's (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) to complete an evaluation before the end of year. Premier Liu said that it represents a vision of the government.

This plan is not welcomed by the army. They say that with the current military strengths of both sides, it's already hard to defend Kinmen. Such a bridge will connect Taiwan and China by land and will be virtually impossible for the army to protect Kinmen. As a result, the completion of such a bridge will keep the door wide open, rendering Kinmen completely defenseless. (建金廈大橋 軍方：防務雪上加霜, Liberty Times, Aug 25rd, 2008)

If Ma insists on building it, he might as well withdraw all the defense force in Kinmen to avoid meaningless loss of soldiers' lives in case of military conflict.

The 823 Artillery Bombardment signifies the unquestionable determination of old KMT to safeguard Kinmen against China's invasion in 1948. Those soldiers who sacrificed their lives in that event are regarded national heroes by the old KMT government. It's so ironic that to commemorate them, Ma Ying-jeou announces such a plan to basically give Kinmen away to China for free.

Earlier this month, CIER announces the evaluation report on KXB. It says that there might be economic benefits if such a bridge is built, but due to the fact that Xiamen is a much more developed area than Kinmen is, a bridge will speed up the outflow of Kinmen resources and eventually bring deterioration to Kinmen in the long run.

Therefore the evaluation report suggests that Ma government to postpone such a plan (中經院報告 建議金廈大橋緩建, Liberty Times, Mar 3rd, 2009)

According the above news piece, the evaluation is entirely based on the economy interests. Neither the safety of Kinmen against possible invasion nor the national security of Taiwan is evaluated.

The report is submitted to the Executive Yuan for review. Lets see if Ma Ying-jeou's "evaluation before construction" is just for show.

High School Student Arrested for Asking Ma to Step down

Can any one recall the time that people still had the freedom to ask the former president Chen Shui-bian to step down, without the fear of getting arrested or questioned by the police ?

On March 3rd, a high school student was arrested immediately by the police for shouting "Ma Ying-jeou step down!" when Ma was in transition of his Taiwan High Speed Rail (HSR) ride through Chiayi (嘉義).

According to the Liberty Times (嗆「馬英九下台」高三生遭逮捕), the student was interrogated in the police station, which scared the student's mother to death. She asked the police for leniency. The police didn't release the student until some document was signed (confession of a crime?) and the student got finger-printed.

The police office at HSR Chiayi Station claims that the reason they "brought" the student in is to "persuade him to focus on study in order to be a good student". They also claim that they conducted "personal information investigation" for the safety of president.

It seems that the student was alone so he didn't violate the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), which requires a gathering of at least 3 people before the police can claim illegal.

He only voiced his protest so he was in no way exercising any violence.

It is obvious that he did not violate any law, and had no threat at all to the society or to Ma Ying-jeou.

But the police arrested him anyway. His family is scared and now he has a police record.

It is still in the first year of Ma's team but it seems that Ma has already imposed a fear factor into Taiwanese mind.

We have a long way to go before this nightmare could possibly over, guys -- 8 years in exact, as Ma often claims.

Ma Govt Requires Public Servants to Pass Exam on PRC Constitution

The Ministry of Examination (考選部, MOE) of Ma Ying-jeou's government issues a rule change requiring the Constitution of People Republic Of China (PRC) be included in the Senior Examination for the Civil Service (公務人員高等考試), a qualification exam for Taiwanese to become a public servant. (高考二級將加考中國憲法 考生傻眼)

Why on earth do Taiwanese need to study PRC constitution, AND PASS the exam, in order to work in Taiwan's government organizations ?

The excuse from MOE:

Following the increasing interactions between Taiwan and China after the Chiang-Chen Meeting, some government organizations respond that they don't have enough people knowing about rules in China and China matters, causing troubles in handling the interactions. Therefore, MOE modified the exam subjects to recruit people with this expertise.

Taiwan have been doing business with many countries in the world for decades. Never have we learned that public servants are required to pass exams on Japan Constitution, British Constitution, USA Constitution, Canada Constitution ... etc.

Those government organizations listed by MOE to require extensive knowledge of PRC Constitution are:

- The Council of Agriculture (農委會)
- The Bureau of Immigration (境管局)
- The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC, 交通部)
- The National Police Administration (NPA, 內政部警政署)
- The Immigration Office (移民署)
- The Department of Health (DOH, 衛生署)
- etc etc (yes, more)

Why do public servants in those govt organizations need to have extensive knowledge about PRC's constitution ? To make sure that they don't violate PRC's law ?

Isn't it the "ROC Consitution" that Ma Ying-jeou strongly upholds ? Now it seems that upholding Taiwan's constitution isn't quite enough for Ma. It's like asking USA's immigration officers to pass an exam on Mexico Constitution.

Or maybe it's a trick of Ma Ying-jeou to exclude Taiwanese from the government positions ?

The application of this new rule will force Taiwanese to study China Constitution if they want to get a government job. To me it shows another blatant move of Ma Ying-jeou to achieve the unification from inside of Taiwan by forcing Taiwanese into PRC's servants.

Update-09.03.11:

Taipei Times reports that the MOE put a halt on the proposal after the Liberty Times' report (cited above):

“As the public was divided over the plan following the release of the draft proposal, the ministry decided to accept the advice not to include the PRC Constitution in national civil service exams,” the ministry said in its second press statement.

Earlier yesterday afternoon, the ministry issued a press release saying the plan to add the PRC Constitution had yet to be finalized and that the ministry would adopt a cautious attitude in asking for input from various circles before making a final decision.

But the other newly added subjects will remain:

• Laws and regulations pertaining to cross-strait relations
• International factors in cross-strait relations
• China’s Taiwan policy and cross-strait negotiations

I still have doubt as how critical the knowledge of the above subjects are for Taiwan government agencies to "follow Taiwan's law." But I don't have enough details to judge that.

Gay Right: Can the Majority Vote to Suppress Minority's Right ?

**** This is in USA, not Taiwan ****

As I just published an article about Ma's alleged gay video, the gay community in California, (CA) USA, was attending a court hearing to fight for their right.

A can't-be-more-brief background:

• CA granted gay/lesbian marriage last year;
• Many gay/lesbian couples took the chance to get married;
• Several other states followed;
• Months later, some committee voted to revoke the state decision. Now the gay marriage is back to illegal;
• The gay community appealed, so the state court issued a hearing to listen arguments from both sides.

What interested me is a question raised by a CNN commentator:

Can the majority vote to suppress minority's right ?

The special feature of the gay right is that, those majority voting against it doesn't suffer a bit in their rights even gay marriage becomes legal. It is simply none of the majority's business. If we want to be more specific, the question can be rephrased as:

Can the majority vote to suppress minority's right that is nothing to do with the majority?

In this case, it did happen, the right of minority (gay) is suppressed by a voting against them.

The gay community argued that it violates the constitution. The anti-gay side argued that the constitution is written by people so people do have the right to re-write it.

Headache !

I think this is very fundamental issue of democracy, as the same question can certainly pop up in any right other than gay's.

The court will give a ruling in 90 days. Lets see how the court handles this.

Sidetracked Critics on Ma Ying-jeou's Alleged Extramarital Gay Affair

We all need to put more effort on building a better system and rejecting a bad one, but not on building allegiance with our hero or vilifying that of our opponents ...

Extramarital gay sex video

The suspicion that Ma Ying-jeou is gay (President of Taiwan in Gay Sex Scandal) has been circling around for some time. I first heard about it roughly a year ago during the heat of 2008 presidential election. A Special Report VCD (非常光碟) Episode-2 was to be published (See Taipei Times 3/9/2008 editorial for a call to stop this notorious VCD). It was said that part of the content is about Ma Ying-jeou's gay life.

Somehow Ma Ying-jeou and his people got to either learn about or watch the content before it was even mass-produced. The production was stalled. It was said that all VCD-making factories in the entire Taiwan were threatened by forces from all sides, including the police, the prosecutors, and the gangsters, thus no one dared to make any copy.

Ma's opponent, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), also condemned the VCD.

After then the talk of Ma being gay seemed to fade out from the scene, until recently when the formal president Chen Shui-bian mentioned it again in his court hearing on 2/25/09.

Chen said that there was a DVD showing Ma Ying-jeou's intimate relationship with former ICRT DJ Charles Mack, nicknamed Chocolate. Chen said that Special Investigation Panel Prosecutor Wu Wen-chung (吳文忠) put a hand to suppress the DVD from going public by the owner, Mack's wife Chang Wei-chin (張瑋津).

After Chen's statement, DPP party whip at Legislature Yuan Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) confirmed that he was there when Wu asked Chang not to reveal the DVD (reference in Chinese: 柯建銘：吳文忠喬光碟 我在場).

Wu responded by saying that he didn't recall if Ker was there when he pull the plug on Chang's intention of going public with it. He might not be aware that by eagerly discrediting Ker, he in fact confirmed that the DVD did exist, and he did exercise his power to suppress it from publishing even he, as he claimed, never watched the DVD.

When asked in this regard the next day, Chang wanted journalists to seek the truth from Ma and Ma's closest think tank King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), who was the former deputy mayor of Taipei when Ma was the mayor and was Ma's campaign manager during the 2008 presidential election. No idea why King's name was mentioned.

The incident was followed by a wave of attack, aimed at Ma's sex orientation, coming from DPP legislators (ref. in Chinese) .


Where is the alleged gay talk from?

It's not uncommon for negative attacks to appear in campaign or other political power struggles. But Ma Ying-jeou is probably the first and only one who is called "being gay." I was wondering why.

In some occasions he did behave girlie (馬英九 沒有啦), but are all men behave girlie gay? I wouldn't make that conclusion. The former New Your Mayor Giuliani once dressed and performed like a woman but we don't say he's gay.

To my knowledge, the only somehow convincing report to this talk seems to be a news piece, published by UDN, about Ma's response to a movie.

When Ma was in New York back in March, 2006, he was visited by the director Ang Lee (李安) of Brokeback Mountain, a movie describing the intimacy of gays. The pro-blue news udnnews.com reported the encounter (in Chinese: 馬英九會李安談斷背山：Jack回眸很迷人):

李安在紐約當地時間晚上10時，到馬英九下榻的 Sheraton LaGuardia East 飯店，與馬英九會晤。顧不得媒體蜂湧取景，馬英九劈頭就問李安，「我一直想問，Jack每次都回眸一笑，那是刻意的嗎？」
Ang Lee went to Sheraton LaGuardia East to visit Ma at 10 pm New York time. Disregarding the surrounding media's rushing attempt for photo shooting, Ma Ying-jeou eagerly initiated the conversation between him and Lee with a question, "I have always been wanting to ask, Jack (a role in the movie) 'smiles while glancing back' every time, is that intentionally arranged?"

　馬英九強調，他看「斷背山」沒有哭，但很感動，他認為 Jack 回眸的表情真的很迷人，好幾次做回眸動作，「非常明顯」。媒體記者聽了忍不住追問馬英九是否對Jack有心動？馬英九遲疑半晌說，「我啊？會啊!會啊！」
Ma Ying-jeou emphasized that when he watched the Brokeback Mountain, he didn't cry but he was very touched. He said that he thinks Jack's "smiles while glancing back" is very very charming, and said that there are several of such a move in the movie that is "very obvious". Reporters couldn't help but ask Ma if he has a crash on Jack. Ma hesitated for a moment and said, "Me? Yes! Yes!"
...
馬英九則回應，李導演說的話，抓住很多人心崁里的感覺，每個人在人生中確實都有段愛的故事，「不一定是異性的，不一定是同性的，這感覺可能跟著他一輩子。」
Ma Ying-jeou said Lee's comment caught the feelings of many. He said that there's indeed a love story in everyone's life, "doesn't necessarily be between sexes or among the same sex. This feelings of love could follow him for the rest of life."

Readers from English-speaking countries might think what Ma said are just straight talks. But in Chinese language, the character "love"(愛) usually is not generalized to describe "all kinds of love" as its English counter part. When you say 愛 and 愛的故事, it almost exclusively indicates the love as in "falling in love".

Certainly, what impression readers will get from this report is up to individual interpretation, and is by no way a proof of Ma Ying-jeou's sexial orientation. However, the description of Ma's response to a gay movie in such details will most probably fuel the rumor or trigger the suspicion that he's homosexual.


Extramarital Affair

But, that certainly is not a problem. "Being gay" should never have become the issue in the first place. It's not only an assassination of personality, but also, even worse, is an insult to gay community by portraying it as negative.

But in Taiwan, media and politicians, especially that of DPP, can't seem to get their hands away from it. No surprise it backfired -- a press conference by the gay community on 2/27 to criticize that the "sexial orientation" is turned into a political tool in Legislative Yuan (in Chinese: 馬巧光碟政治爭議 性別團體斥污名歧視)

With focus on Ma Ying-jeou's sexial orientation, another issue (under the condition of the rumor being true), "extramarital affair", seems to be ignored.

There were many cases that a politician paid dearly for his/her sex affair. It doesn't matter it's gay or not, and doesn't even matter it's extramarital or not.

Examples are former Secretary General of Presidential Office John Chang (章孝嚴), former DPP Kaohsiung Mayor candidate Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄), former New Party Legislator Chu Mei-feng (璩美鳳), and former Judicial Yuan vice president Cheng Chung-mo (城仲模). Because of sex scandal, their political careers suffered either a sharp break or a complete termination.

In USA, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had to resign in March, 2008, from his governor seat for an extramarital sex scandal, and former senator Larry Craig had to give up his senator seat for a gay solicitation in public he was involved in in 2007. One of the Democratic Party stars John Edwards had to go into an early retirement of his political career for his extramarital affair. The are many other examples, many of the people who paid with their career are promising political stars. And don't forget how harshly the former President Bill Clinton was hammered when his extramarital sex scandal was exposed.

Former New York Governor, Eliot Spitzer, announced his resignation on March 10,2008, after his extramarital sex activity was caught by the FBI. His wife of 20-year marriage, Silda Wall Spitzer, stood silently beside him. The sad, depressed look seems to testify how much damage an extramarital sex scandal can do to a family. (click on the image to visit the source page on www.foxnews.com)

The mounting examples show that, in both Taiwan and USA, involving in an extramarital sex scandal is considered serious enough for a politician to pay with his/her political career.

But Ma Ying-jeou is different. He is above all the laws and rules applied to all politicians in both Taiwan and USA. Not that there's a proof that he is involved in extramarital affair. When his alleged extramarital sex scandal became a widespread topic among people, not even any sort of investigation is conducted. Instead the authority went full speed with state power to suppress a possible evidence.

Certainly, the anti-government camp play no small part in this negligence by focusing on the issue of Ma's sexial orientation.


What really is at risk: erosion of justice

But the issue of 'extramarital sex scandal" doesn't even come close to what really matters to Taiwanese. At worst it's just Ma Ying-jeou's personal reputation. Taiwanese won't suffer a bit more even if Ma has many of such personal scandals, and won't suffer a bit less if the rumor is proved to be just a rumor.

What really matters in this case is the abuse of prosecutorial power.

The development of Ma's alleged gay sex video revealed, as I highlighted in an earlier paragraph, that a prosecutor dared to suppress something from publishing even though he doesn't know what exactly the content of the material is.

That's the point Chen Shui-bian wanted to make.

If you look at the context of Chen's entire defense strategy in the court hearing -- that he gave several examples of prosecutors involving in prosecutorial power abuses in several cases, including Ma's alleged gay sex video -- you would know that the purpose Chen mentioned Ma's alleged extramarital video is to remind people of prosecutor misconducts. Ma's sex life is NOT what Chen aimed for.

Unlike some personal reputation, the prosecutorial misconduct represents the erosion of judiciary system and it affects the right of every one in Taiwan. It should have been what bothers Taiwanese the most in this sex scandal storm.

Unfortunately Chen's real purpose is ignored and Ma's alleged sex video stood out. The green camp (or at least, part of it) once again showed the lack of focus on something really matters, and the blue camp once again showed the audacity to abuse judiciary power and put their people above the law.


Extended:

1. A screenshot of the webpage 馬英九會李安談斷背山：Jack回眸很迷人, in case it disappears into the thin air.
   
   
2. Video of Frank Hsieh and Ma Ying-jeou talked about their views on "Gay Marriage Law" in one of the Presidential debates:
   02-24-08 總統大選辯論 公民提問 10 -- 是否贊成同志婚姻法.
   I personally think they both did a lousy job on this. One thing surprises me is that one attendent mentioned there are total of 2,000,000 gays/lesbians in Taiwan, which is almost 1/10 of entire population ! Did I hear it wrong ?


3. Taipei Times reports a press conference held by the gay community on 2/26/09, Gay activists to form bloc for Da-an district election. It does quote one of the attendants saying that "we estimated that around 10 percent of voters in Da-an District are gay."


4. Earlier this year, Ma Ying-jeou was heavily criticized by the gay, lesbian, transgender and sex worker rights activists for discrimination against them: Groups slam Ma over gender 'bias'. It seems to show that Ma Ying-jeou applies his honey-tongue to all walks of lives.
   
   

   “Ma said in his New Year's speech that he would not hesitate to come to the rescue of whoever is suffering — and it's all bullshit,” Chung Chun-chu (鍾君竺), executive director of the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters, said during a press conference to publicize a list of new items highlighting government violations of gender and sexual rights.
   
   “He is a more skillful liar than [former president] Chen Shui-bian [陳水扁],”(highlighted by Taiwan Echo) Chung said, as she commented on news reports about the government's failure to make any progress on legalizing prostitution and gay marriage.
   ...
   “When Chen [Shui-bian] raided brothels [as Taipei mayor], he did it openly,” Chung said. “Ma, however, makes beautiful but empty promises.”