Under increasing pressure to distance himself from the growing number of allegations that Ma Ying-jiu's campaign has made improper and illegal use of taxpayers money for campaign related activities, the president and the highest ranking members of his campaign decided to skip the One Bike One event, which had been hyped for over a year.
Instead, the embattled incumbent visited a convention of doctors.
Update:
Despite initial estimates of one million riders, which had been lowered to 110,000 riders. The event only managed to attract just under 73,000 participants, shy of the government's goals.
Although the event probably succeeded in providing cover for spreading largesse to vital KMT patronage networks all over Taiwan, it failed to captivate the public's imagination in the same vein as the 2004 Hand in Hand rally, which catapulted DPP candidate, Chun Shui-bian to victory on a groundswell of Taiwanese national pride against Chinese hegemony.
The failure to captivate the Taiwanese imagination with such an event, political or not, demonstrates, in part, the cleavage between Ma Ying-jiu's push for Taiwanese national ambiguity, and the Taiwanese desire for more meaningful expressions of their national and ethnic identities.
Who knew a bike rally could be so loaded... ?
Update II:
A report on how Ma used the cultural commitee for his own campaing- copying DPP's 228 牽手護台灣
Here is a report from 自由時報：
為避免政治炒作，文建會主委曾志朗前天就表明拒絕任何政治性的宣傳，因此，時常參加建百各種活動的總統馬英九及行政院長吳敦義，昨天反而缺席了「轉動台灣向前行」活動，由副總統蕭萬長、文建會主委曾志朗、體委會主委戴遐齡及執行團隊總召集人劉金標等人帶隊，自中正紀念堂出發騎往士林官邸。不過，蕭萬長發表感言時還提及很「讚」，並舉起雙手比如同「二號」的手勢。
The red part says the Ma and Wu are usually very keen at joining 100 Year activities but they intentionally skipped One Bike One event, instead the activity was lauched by vice president Siew, the head of culture commitee, and the head of Physical Education, and the chairman of Giant- King Liu (劉金標). Although the cultural commitee emphasized this is not a political event, Siew (蕭) still made a "V" hand gesture ( their campaign number 2) when he was talking about "讚".
Apparently, I am not the only one who saw this as having political implications.
