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2012 ELECTIONS: Ma
camp denies forcing rally attendance
‘INVITATION’: A KMT official said the party was
simply encouraging party members to attend the rallies and it wouldn’t force
anyone, especially civil servants, to attend
By Mo Yan-chih / Staff Reporter
Democratic Progressive Party
legislative candidate Lee Chien-chang tells a press conference about an internal
document from President Ma Ying-jeou’s campaign headquarters that Lee said
showed Ma’s campaign team has used government resources and mobilized civil
servants to attend rallies for Ma to be held on Sunday.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election
campaign office and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday denied abusing
government resources by forcing civil servants to attend rallies for Ma on
Sunday.
The rallies, called “Standing Up for Taiwan,” will be held simultaneously on
Sunday afternoon in Taipei, Greater Taichung and Hualien and Taitung counties.
Ma will lead the rally in Taipei, joining the crowd on the walk from Taipei City
Hall to Ketagalan Boulevard.
First lady Chow Mei-ching (周美青) and the KMT vice presidential candidate, Premier
Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), will join the rally in Greater Taichung, Ma’s campaign office
plan indicates.
The Chinese-language Next Magazine reported yesterday that to ensure a large
turnout at the rallies, Ma’s re-election campaign office and the KMT instructed
eight Cabinet agencies or organizations — the ministries of the interior,
finance, economic affairs, transportation and communications and education, the
councils for labor affairs and agriculture and the Training Center of the
Veteran’s Affairs Commission — to each mobilize about 500 civil servants to
attend the rallies.
A total of 4,000 civil servants would attend the rally in Taipei, the Next
Magazine report said, adding that the Taipei City Government would also likely
mobilize city servants to join the campaign event.
Rejecting the accusations, KMT Culture and Communications Committee director
Chuang Po-chun (莊伯仲) said the rally was being organized in line with three basic
principles: no use of government resources, no use of office hours and no forced
participation.
Chuang said the KMT’s Taipei City branch did hold a meeting with
government-employed party members on Dec. 18 to discuss the campaign activity
and asked them to invite party members to attend Sunday’s rally.
“We are encouraging party members to attend the rally. It’s an invitation. The
meeting was not held to mobilize administrative mechanisms for campaign
purposes,” he said.
“We won’t force anyone, especially civil servants, to join the event,” he said.
Ma’s campaign spokesperson, Yin Wei (殷瑋), also dismissed the allegation, saying
the Ma camp had never issued documents to any administrative bodies and
compelled civil servants to join the rallies.
Government Information Office Minister Philip Yang (楊永明) said that while the
Executive Yuan had been informed of Sunday’s rallies by the Ma-Wu campaign
office and KMT headquarters, the government did not force public servants to
participate in the activity.
Yang said the Cabinet was told that government employees who are not working
that day were welcome to join the rallies.
He added that the Cabinet could not possibly use coercion to demand government
agencies mobilize their employees to join election rallies.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan
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