A-bian rails on KMT, "curses" again at rally

At a rally in Kaohsiung last night, President Chen Shui-bian responded to allegations KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou made that A-bian and Frank Hsieh had been informed of the Kaohsiung mayoral election verdict before it was released.

Ma's suspicions were based on the A-bian saying, "We'll see the result this afternoon" before the verdict was released. As you can see, that's a great reason to suspect that the judge was in the DPP's pocket.

As has been typical of A-bian in these final days in office, he came out guns blazing. The money quote from the speech (no pun intended), as quoted in the United Daily News today:

「本來就是咱贏，不必讀法律，用膝蓋想也知」，要讓國民黨得到啟示，不能每次輸就「牽拖洨（台語，指精液）牽拖沘（指鼻涕）」。
"We won the election in the first place, something you could figure out thinking with your knee even if you didn't read the law." Hoping to put the KMT on notice, Abian said that the party should not "drag everything out" [by not really admitting defeat] every time they lose.

Now the reason this became a news item is that the phrase for "drag everything out" that A-bian used is a Taiwanese phrase that literally translates as "drag out sperm, drag out snot."

When we saw this on the television news today, My wife's Pingtung family laughed; my wife just said "that's no big deal." She then said the phrase is essentially the same as saying "牽拖東 牽拖西" (to drag things out).

Of course, all of the Taipei people questioned in the news clip talked about how such speech is not appropriate for a head of state -- a feeling I think the South would generally not share. Personally, I just like to see A-bian in all his rhetorical glory, appropriate or not.

You can view A-bian's remarks on video here.

Bonus article of the day on how the new single member districts make the legislative election more like the local borough chief elections.