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2012 ELECTIONS: KMT huffing, puffing
over ‘three little pigs’ campaign
By Jake Chung / Staff Writer, with CNA
Boxes of piggy banks are ready
for shipment yesterday at the Greater Tainan headquarters for Democratic
Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s presidential election campaign. The
headquarters has been turned into a mini-factory to process piggy banks destined
for campaign offices and service centers around the country.
Photo: CNA
The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP)
use of children as spokespersons for its “three little pigs” campaign is an act
that politicizes children and the party should put a stop to it, the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus said yesterday.
The “three little pigs” campaign stems from an incident last month when the DPP
had to return three piggy banks donated by three-year-old triplets after the
Control Yuan warned that the donations were in violation of the Act Governing
Political Donations (政治獻金管理條例). The law stipulates that only people of voting
age and those who meet other voting eligibility rules are allowed to make
political donations.
The incident sparked a craze among Tsai’s supporters to put their donations to
the party into piggy banks. It prompted the DPP to declare this month “little
pigs month,” with children as its campaign spokespersons calling on supporters
to adopt piggy banks to support the party.
“Labeling children with political labels and ‘contaminating’ their innocence
with politics is heart-rending,” said KMT caucus whip Chao Li-yun (趙麗雲). “Could
this also be seen as a type of bullying?”
Chao called on DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to cease using innocent
children who know nothing about politics as spokespersons for the DPP.
Chao said she has received complaints from many parents saying that they were
saddened to see children appear at DPP fundraisers as Tsai’s electioneering
tools.
Saying that children are public assets of society as a whole and the public
should do everything they can to protect them, KMT Legislator Chen Shu-huey
(陳淑惠) said: “The DPP should stop [the practice] and not turn innocent children
into electioneering and fundraising tools.”
DPP caucus whip Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) responded by saying the KMT should not
smear the DPP’s campaign just because it is jealous.
The “three little pigs” campaign is being run primarily to raise small donations
to fund the election candidates and the target is not children, but all citizens
with voting rights, Tsai Huang-liang said.
According to DPP spokesman Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲), the DPP’s regional campaign
headquarters in Greater Tainan has become a “piggy bank factory,” charged with
providing 5,000 piggy banks to all regional campaign headquarters and DPP
service areas across the nation.
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