TAIPEI, Taiwan – Former President Ma Ying-jeou Wednesday ridiculed the government’s decision to bar him from attending a Hong Kong event over security concerns, delivering instead a video-taped speech in which he humorously warned his audience of being in a “dangerous city.”
“I didn’t know that Hong Kong was such a dangerous city,” Ma said in the video-taped keynote speech delivered at the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award dinner that he had been invited to attend.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you’d better be careful,” said Ma, in the introduction to his speech, recounting the reasons that the Taiwan government had given for banning him from traveling to Hong Kong.
Ma said he found it strange that the new government – of President Tsai Ing-wen – thought his visit to Hong Kong would be a national security issue involving his personal safety and a possible leak of state secrets.
Ma, who stepped down on May 20 after an eight-year stint as Taiwan’s president, said he asked for permission to make a seven-hour trip to Hong Kong but “unfortunately the Presidential Office rejected it.”
According to the Presidential Office, as Ma has only recently left office, there would not be sufficient time to prepare for a visit to a territory that had not worked with Taiwan on security on such a level.
The Presidential Office also said the new government had yet to discover what kind of classified information Ma had access to and whether he had returned all those documents and completed clearance procedures.
Ma told his Hong Kong audience that whether the reasons that the Presidential Office had given for the refusal were convincing or not, he, as a former president, would do his best to serve the country.
He said he respected the power with which his successor Tsai made the decision.
He offered an apology to the audience for being unable to attend the dinner, although he maintained it was not the case he should be apologizing – another apparent dig at Tsai.
