<![CDATA['Errrr' ... Singapore's Ho Ching thanks 'friends in Taiwan' after quibble over masks donation]>
Ho Ching, the wife of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, on Monday sought to draw a line under a quibble with Taiwanese social media users she had set off over the weekend with a comment about Taipei's donations of masks to her country.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, Ho " chief executive of Singapore's state investment firm Temasek Holdings " shared an article from the English-language Taiwan News about the donation of masks with the caption "Errrr", an interjection used in text messaging to denote a sense of discomfort.
A comment by Singapore's Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin earlier on Monday " since deleted " suggested there may have been some frustration in the city state over Taipei's move to impose a blanket ban on mask exports in the earlier months of the pandemic. That policy affected the export to Singapore of masks that ST Engineering, the country's state-linked defence firm, produces in Taiwan.
It was Ho's post, however, that grabbed the attention of social media users. Many commenters remarked that her response to news about the mask donation suggested she was ungrateful even as masks remain in short supply amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
People wearing protective face masks walk in Singapore's Little India district. Photo: EPA alt=People wearing protective face masks walk in Singapore's Little India district. Photo: EPA
On Sunday, with heated online discussions still ongoing, the Taiwanese foreign ministry waded into the matter. In a statement, it underlined that the government's donation of masks to Singapore was well received.
The statement did not refer directly to Ho and said bilateral policies between the Singapore and Taiwan "will be based on official statements and will not be influenced by statements by individuals." Singapore does not have formal state-to-state ties with Taiwan but maintains informal ties with the self-ruled island, including military links opposed by Beijing.
With the debate unabated by Monday afternoon, Ho amended her original one-word caption with a longer message in which she said she was "forever grateful" to "all our friends and friends of friends in Taiwan".
Ho said she was "totally grateful for every one which has reached out, advised, and tried their best to help, sometimes successfully and sometimes not". She did not apologise for the controversy. "Sincere effort is what I will treasure forever," she wrote. "And mistakes? Also forgiven, lah!"
Her earlier "Errrr" comment had triggered angry reactions from dozens of Facebook users. One wrote that Ho was "politicising everything", while Facebook user Jaz Hsieh wrote that she could not understand Ho's reaction. "Taiwanese are kind and willing to help others, we are not asking anything, just simply [hoping for] world peace and everyone [can] get through the crisis together."
Elsewhere, netizens were attempting to piece together what they believed was the backstory to the bizarre saga.
In particular focus was a Facebook page called Global Times Singapore " its affiliation to the Beijing mouthpiece is unclear " that had a post last week titled "Do you know that Singapore would have way more than enough masks, if not for Taiwan?".
The post discussed mask production lines in Taiwan owned by ST Engineering, claiming that the state-linked firm had been ordered by Singapore to ramp up mask manufacturing after the first coronavirus cases were publicised in mainland China.
According to the post, the mask stock was expected to leave Taiwan for Singapore after the Lunar New Year holiday. "However, with or without ill intentions, the Taiwan government decided to ban exports of all types of masks, resulting in ST Engineering not being able to send its production of N95 masks from Taiwan to Singapore," it said.
The post was shared over 100 times, while its message was replicated and shared over 2,000 times, according to a check by This Week in Asia.
In his now-deleted tweet, Singapore's parliamentary speaker Tan replied in the affirmative when asked by a Twitter user about whether Taiwan stopped the exports of the masks.
In its statement on Sunday, Taiwan's foreign ministry acknowledged its mask ban but said "as the export of equipment and machinery for producing masks [was] not banned, Singapore has successfully moved its production lines back home".
On Monday, Taiwan's health and welfare minister Chen Shih-chung said: "I admit that when we banned the export of masks, the two mask production lines were unable to produce masks and that has caused Singapore some disruptions but we let them move [their operations] out as fast as we could."
He told a daily press briefing there were "a lot of discussions online regarding this, and I think it should be stopped", adding that on the mask issue, if Singapore was willing "then we would want to help them as friends".
In Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party legislator Wang Ting-yu defended Taipei's move, and disputed parts of the Global Times Singapore post.
The Marina Bay Sands integrated resort lights up in tribute to the health care workers and people staying home to curb the spread of Covid-19 in Singapore. Photo: Reuters alt=The Marina Bay Sands integrated resort lights up in tribute to the health care workers and people staying home to curb the spread of Covid-19 in Singapore. Photo: Reuters
Taiwan, which has close to 400 cases, has pledged to donate 10 million masks to countries around the world, including the worst-hit European nations such as Italy and Spain. Singapore " which has seen cases more than triple over the last two weeks to more than 2,500 " last week reversed its policy on mask wearing.
Earlier in the pandemic, the official guidance was that masks should only be worn by those who were unwell or exhibiting symptoms of Covid-19. With concerns about asymptomatic cases rising, mask-wearing is now compulsory for people visiting shopping malls, supermarkets and pharmacies " with the policy soon to extend to public transport commuters as well.
Trade minister Chan Chun Sing last week said Singapore was building up its own mask-production capacity. "But at this point in time, it will not be appropriate for us to talk about this capacity, because we are working with partners to secure the materials, the lines," he said.
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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