Standing near center stage in the shadow of a giant balloon pig at a Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) “homecoming party” for piggy banks in Taipei yesterday, Wu Nai-ren (吳乃仁) quietly nodded his head.
The chief campaign manager for DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) nodded because the number of people showing up at the “three little pigs” fundraising campaign on a day of low temperatures and rain was much higher than expected.
Making a play on the English idiom “having a wolf by the ear,” Wu jokingly said the DPP now “had the pig by the ear.”
The piggy bank innovative campaign was never part of Wu or the DPP’s plan. The DPP did not initiate the campaign until after the Control Yuan said in October that it would look into the party’s acceptance of three piggy banks donated by three children, which it said was a possible violation of the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法).
Since then, the DPP has distributed more than 200,000 piggy banks nationwide and supporters have responded en masse, using the campaign as a vehicle to show support for the DPP and voice their -displeasure against the much wealthier Chinese National Party (KMT).
The enormous show of support — and Tsai’s preference for the campaign, according to DPP staffers — was why the DPP went along with the impromptu campaign, which later became one of the main themes of Tsai’s presidential bid.
“I don’t think this has ever happened in the history of Taiwan’s elections. And I never imagined it would be this huge,” said DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲), who first proposed the countermeasure to the Control Yuan’s decision.
However, DPP officials were concerned about yesterday’s turnout because of the bad weather in Taipei during the past week. Party officials were so worried that some DPP staffers prayed to the local earth god, Tu Di Gong (土地公), at a temple on Friday night in the hopes that the deity would deliver good weather yesterday.
As it turned out, supporters’ passion overcame the bad weather. The DPP said that 50,000 supporters showed up, although the number seemed closer to 30,000. Perhaps the event was held too early for young people because most of the supporters who showed up were elderly citizens and their grandchildren.
A women surnamed Wu (吳) said she had brought six full piggy banks in a shopping bag, adding that although they were heavy, “it was a worthy cause.”
A child said he earned an allowance from his parents by doing his housework and household chores so he could “feed the pig.”
The “accidental campaign” had a multi-faceted meaning for the DPP, campaign spokesperson Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) said.
The campaign could generate public interest, from independent voters in particular, boost morale for DPP supporters, help the party’s mobilization efforts because piggy bank donors would be asked to give their names and phone numbers, and increase the DPP’s election fund, she said.
The “three little pigs” event also perfectly matched the message the DPP wanted to send out — a David versus Goliath-like image of its difficult battle against the KMT.
Tsai has been a “lucky candidate” throughout her presidential campaign, said a staffer at the campaign’s news department who wished to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
“Whenever she started speaking, the rain stopped and the bad weather was gone. The ‘three little pigs’ were God-sent, you may say,” he said.
Toward the end of the rally, the rain stopped and a rainbow appeared in the sky. Perhaps that was a lucky sign as well.
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