TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) attacked the credibility of Taiwan’s most prestigious university for the sake of just one election candidate, the Kuomintang (KMT) said Thursday (Aug. 11).

Tsai, who also chairs the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), told the ruling party to maintain its support for its Taoyuan City mayoral candidate Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), even after National Taiwan University (NTU) stripped him of his master’s degree Aug. 9 due to plagiarism.

At a news conference Thursday, KMT legislators accused the president of indirectly telling the Ministry of Education to reject the NTU ruling about Lin, UDN reported. The politicians called on all former NTU presidents and on the nine candidates currently in the running to become the college’s new head to stand up and offer their opinion on the plagiarism controversy.

KMT Legislative Caucus leader William Tseng (曾銘宗) said Tsai’s comments amounted to slander targeting academic neutrality, while he also questioned whether the president did not know that the NTU review committee members had thoroughly read Lin’s master’s thesis and compared it to the other thesis it reportedly plagiarized.

Tseng also called on all the university’s students and alumni to come out in public support of its decision, while asking voters to reject the DPP in the Nov. 26 local elections.