Ruling, opposition parties trade blows over the Internet

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Supporters of the Ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) were steamed yesterday over a Chinese-language Web site which recently launched a voting campaign on 36 mock movie posters that decried allegations of DPP corruption. By yesterday, more than 680,000 Internet users had so far cast ballots on "Tiffany's Trilogy," billed as a movie featuring First-lady Wu Shu-chen.

Malapot, which is at the Website (http://www.malapot.com/html/event.asp) has organized an "Oscar" voting contest for "Tiffany's Trilogy," "The Dangerous Four," "I don't Feel Good," and other mock posters, which are not actually Hollywood movies but instead a Taiwan take on well-known American movies as a means of poking fun at certain DPP heavyweights for alleged corruption.

For instance, the poster for "Tiffany's Trilogy" shows first lady Wu Shu-chen holding a Tiffany's ring with the inscription "It is not my fault; it was the diamond that induced all the problems." The cloudy sky in the poster's background directly hints at the famous Hollywood trilogy, "Lord of the Rings."

The "Dangerous Four" refers to four DPP heavyweights -- Su Tseng-chang, Yu Shyi-kun, Annette Lu and Frank Hsieh -- who were "cast" in the action movie "Fantastic Four."

Not to be outdone, DPP supporters have also been using the Internet to decry Ma Ying-jeou, the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) candidate in the 2008 presidential election. "Little Ma's Blog" (http://www.wretch.cc:80/blog/ma1dog) has been intentionally calling the KMT the "party of citizen dogs," while questioning Ma's intentions behind complaining about the sluggish economy, given the party's allegedly huge financial resources.

Meanwhile, Minister Shieh Jhy-wey of the Government Information Office released that afternoon two TV commercials produced by the government to tout the achievements of the Democratic Progressive Party-led government over the last eight years.

The commercial features people confident about the country, said Shieh while speaking at a news conference called to unveil the two commercials. He added that optimism shown by the people in these commercials will rub off on the general public, and "put the country in the right light" prior to legislative and presidential elections slated for next January and March, respectively.

In one of the commercials, a foreign businessman talks about working in Taiwan for 11 years, while the other features a farmer who had appeared in an award-winning documentary film about the plight of local rice farmers.

Noting the opposition Kuomintang had filmed a TV commercial criticizing the DPP administration's performance through the remarks of a South Korean, the GIO minister said only an "alien regime" -- a term used by the DPP to refer to the KMT -- would stoop to such practices.

The two TV commercials brought to seven the number of TV commercials financed by the GIO to show the DPP administration's achievements, including the government's pension system for senior farmers, its new labor retirement system and new social security system, among others.