By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday announced it would begin of a “piggy bank campaign” to help fund DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) presidential bid and to parody a recent government warning.
Control Yuan officials told the DPP earlier this month that the government watchdog would launch an investigation into the party’s acceptance of three piggy banks donated by children on Oct. 9, because the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法) stipulates that only people of voting age and who are eligible to vote are allowed to make political donations.
The DPP returned the three piggy banks to the family in Greater Tainan on Friday, but said the Control Yuan was neglecting the “human side of elections.”
The party also decided to turn the warning into a campaign event, saying that it planned to distribute more than 100,000 piggy banks to supporters nationwide in the coming weeks.
Donors will be able to return the piggy banks to Tsai’s campaign offices afterward, DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said, saying that the date for the returns will be announced soon.
The DPP has been advocating micro-donations from its supporters and has turned down large political donations from local businesses since Tsai began chairing the party in May 2008.
“In terms of funding, we need to play a completely different game because our rival — the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] — is so much richer,” DPP spokesperson Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said.