The Kuomintang on Monday accused the Democratic Progressive Party of loudly professing concern about child abuse while collectively bullying Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an's underage son. Chen Yi-hsin, who heads the KMT's Culture and Communications Committee, said in a press release that the DPP had dragged the child directly into partisan struggle, CNA reported.
What did the KMT say about Kaohsiung and Tainan? The child safety nets in Kaohsiung and Tainan were full of holes, and tragedies kept occurring despite earlier warnings from the National Audit Office, Chen Yi-hsin said in the statement carried by CNA. He cited the death of a 2-year-old boy abused by a nanny in Kaohsiung, said the Kaohsiung city government could not escape blame, and said Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai should apologise to children and parents before seeking to become premier. Pointing to a Tainan case in which an infant was abused and its body dumped, and to a preschool caregiver who mistreated young children 53 times, he asked whether Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che's repeated criticism of Chiang's administration was about finding a job after leaving office.
What did the KMT say about Chiang's son? Political attacks have a basic line, Chen Yi-hsin said: adults may attack and debate one another however they like, but minors should not be used as tools against political opponents. He said Puma Shen and the DPP, while loudly professing concern about child abuse, were collectively bullying the boy, which had turned into "the most ironic drama of political hypocrisy."
How did the DPP respond? The DPP, in a reply carried by CNA, told Chen Yi-hsin not to follow Chiang in "answering B when asked A" and in deflecting whenever municipal problems came up, saying that speaking ill of others would not fix one's own mess. It said Chiang had repeatedly let incidents involving children slide and that the public would judge for itself. Public scrutiny, it said, concerned an exchange-student programme involving Chiang's son and whether the mayor had properly avoided a conflict of interest, adding that it was Chiang himself who kept posting photos of his son.
