From a story in today’s Taiwan News, titled, "Ma apologizes for sixth time over conflict at Hsieh’s office":
Opposition Kuomintang presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou yesterday bowed three times to apologize for the sixth time to his rival Frank Hsieh, his supporters, and [to society], in a gesture seen as damage control after four KMT legislators intruded into Hsieh’s campaign headquarters on Wednesday.
The reason for the multiple apologies was that four legislators from Ma’s party – Alex Fei, Chen Chieh, Lo Ming-tsai and Luo Shu-lei – all tried to steal documents from Hsieh’s official campaign office. Ten days before Taiwan’s presidential election. And they got caught. And all hell subsequently broke loose.
Apologies are of course in order from Ma, but the Taiwan News‘ headline reminded me of a Joe Hung column in the China Post from a couple years back, where he implied Chen Shui-bian was an unfit president simply because he said he was sorry TOO FREQUENTLY:
President Chen Shui-bian is the most apologetic chief of state in Taiwan’s brief annals of democratic government — and probably in world history as well.
He has apologized ten times in the six years of his presidency.
Hey Joe, your man Ma’s not doing too shabby himself, what with 6 apologies in two and half DAYS. That’s gotta be some kinda record too, doncha think?
If it isn’t, never fear: there’s still seven days left till voters here go to the polls. All Ma needs to do is average 0.6 apologies per day, and he’ll have achieved in a mere ten days what took Chen Shui-bian six long YEARS to accomplish.
Jia yo, Ma Ying-jeou! Jia yo.