The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday returned three piggy banks to three-year-old triplets in Greater Tainan after the Control Yuan warned the political donations were in violation of electoral laws.
The three children, guided by their mother and grandfather, “donated” their piggy banks to DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) during a rally the party’s presidential candidate held in Greater Tainan on Oct. 9.
Control Yuan officials recently told the accounting department of Tsai’s campaign office by telephone that the agency would launch an investigation into her campaign’s acceptance of donations from children, which is a violation of the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法), DPP spokesman Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) told a press conference yesterday.
Photo: Wang Chun-chung, Taipei Times
Individuals under voting age or who cannot vote are legally barred from making political donations.
The DPP’s campaign office has received donations from several teenagers who are not eligible to vote and the party would do its best to return the donations, Lin said.
However, Lin said the Control Yuan had neglected the “human side of elections,” adding that the agency had become a “hired thug” of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election campaign.
The DPP has filed complaints with the Control Yuan over several violations of administrative neutrality, including alleged illegal campaigning by Council of Agricultural Affairs Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) and Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫), Lin said.
Tseng suggested that a DPP candidate was involved in vote-buying, but the complaints were all dismissed, Lin said.
“Those cases are the ones the Control Yuan should be working on,” he said.
Lin returned the donations to the family in Greater Tainan yesterday afternoon on behalf of Tsai.
The triplets’ grandfather, who is reportedly an avid supporter of Tsai, was quoted as saying that the children wanted to make the donation and that they had donated NT$30,000 to Tsai’s campaign.
“I really don’t think [the Control Yuan] should make a big deal out of this,” he said.
In response, Hsieh Sung-chih (謝松枝), director of the Control Yuan’s Public Functionary Assets Disclosure Department, said the agency had simply given the DPP a “friendly reminder” that accepting funds from people without the right to vote was in violation of Article 7 of the act.
The Control Yuan did not really intend to investigate the case, Hsieh said.
“It’s not a problem, as long as the DPP gives it back to the donors within a month,” he said.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods