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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