Sunflower followers are ‘stupid as pigs’: Alex Tsai

By Loa Iok-sin / Staff reporter





Many of those who took part in the Sunflower movement are “stupid as pigs” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) posted on Facebook yesterday, calling Academia Sinica associate researcher Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) and student activists Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) and Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) “people of low quality.”

“There are some Sunflowers [activists] who are smart enough to illegally collect donations saying that they would like to recall lawmakers,” Tsai wrote, referring to a campaign being waged by several civic groups to recall legislators they say ignore the voice of the public and only follow President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) instructions, and which has Tsai as one of its main targets.

“However, others are stupid like pigs, they go around making public speeches, accusing the government of trying to lock Taiwan’s economy into China’s and citing this as a reason to be anti-China,” he wrote. “During the Cultural Revolution in China, ‘sunflower’ was used to refer to those Red Guards who were enthusiastic supporters of [then-Chinese leader] Mao Zedong (毛澤東). These ‘Sunflowers’ in Taiwan seem to not know history, since they adopted the most pro-China symbol possible — that is just hilarious.”

Responding to criticism that he rarely questions officials during meetings of the legislature’s Finance Committee, Tsai said in the post that is because he is the most senior member on the committee and therefore there is nothing that he does not understand.

“When officials want to consult lawmakers, I am their first choice; when there are important issues to be voted on by the committee, [my fellow lawmakers] also vote according to my opinion,” he said.

When asked to comment on the post, Sunflower movement leader Lee Chun-ta (李俊達) said Tsai’s remarks are not worth paying even the slightest bit of attention to.

“No one should waste their time paying attention to such misguided remarks based on twisted facts,” Lee said. “We should pay more attention to social issues.”