The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) opened its regional presidential campaign headquarters in Greater Taichung yesterday and started distributing piggy banks across the nation in a fundraising drive.
“Each and every one of these piggy banks symbolize people’s expectations of the DPP as well as the DPP’s determination to stand on the side of Taiwanese, rather than big businesses,” DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said in Greater Taichung.
“The micro-donations coming from supporters represent the expectations, commitment, recognition and hope they have for the DPP ... a wish to have a new government to lead the country,” she added.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
More than 10,000 supporters attended the opening ceremony as Tsai, the DPP’s presidential candidate, personally distributed piggy banks and saw several supporters throwing NT$1,000 bills onto the stage.
The DPP launched a “piggy bank campaign” to help fund Tsai’s bid and to play on a recent government warning after the Control Yuan said earlier this month that it would launch an investigation into the party’s acceptance of three piggy banks donated by children on Oct. 9. 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 turned the warning into a campaign promotion, saying it planned to distribute more than 100,000 piggy banks to supporters nationwide in the coming weeks.
It also announced next month would be “Piggy Banks Month,” during which a series of events will be planned.
At Longshan Temple in Taipei yesterday morning, the DPP’s Taipei City headquarters distributed 5,400 piggy banks to supporters who stood in a long line of more than 500m for hours.
Some of them put money in a donation box without taking piggy banks, while some did both.
An elder citizen surnamed Lin, who was the first in line, said he lived in Guandu (關渡) and arrived at the temple at 8am for the event to “support Taiwan and democracy.”
The DPP, which plans to distribute at least 100,000 piggy banks nationwide, would “invite all the piggies home” some time in December so supporters could bring the donations to Tsai’s campaign at the same time and “maybe break the Guinness World Record for the most piggy banks gathered in one place,” said Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄), chief executive of the Taipei City campaign headquarters.
“Interestingly, we found out that few people want blue piggy banks. Maybe we should have them in more colors other than blue, orange and red,” Chuang said.
On Saturday, more than 2,500 piggy banks were distributed at the DPP national campaign headquarters in Banciao District (板橋) in New Taipei City (新北市). Similar events were held at regional campaign headquarters nationwide.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching