Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) campaign office yesterday released data on donations it has received and its campaign expenditures, urging Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) to follow suit.
The data — released by the office at a news conference in Taipei yesterday morning — showed that Tsai received NT$405,345,961 (US$12,346,063 at current exchange rates) in donations between May 26 and Nov. 22.
During the same period, the office spent NT$195,055,578 on its campaign, on items including transport, personnel, the rents of its offices, and others.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Based on data released by the office in September, donations to Tsai’s campaign in the past three months have increased by NT$329,681,840, from the NT$75,664,121 received between May 26 and Aug. 31.
“When it comes to campaign funds, the DPP always has to train its own soldiers and grow its own food,” Tsai’s campaign chief executive officer Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀) told the news conference.
Of the NT$210,290,383 left in its political donations account, NT$73,369,712 is earmarked for spending by Tsai’s national campaign headquarters, while the rest is to be allocated to local campaign offices, Lin said.
Given that Tsai’s national campaign headquarters still has NT$145,333,635 in unpaid bills, it is actually in deficit to a tune of NT$71,963,923, Lin said.
“We spent a little more than NT$700 million on campaigning in the last presidential election and we hope to keep it under that amount this time. However, with only one-and-a-half months left before the Jan. 16 election, we have only managed to raise about NT$400 million so far,” Lin said.
The party received 180,000 micro-donations during the last presidential election, but it has only received 30,000 of these donations so far in this campaign, Lin said, encouraging more DPP supporters to donate to the party.
Lin said a source close to the KMT told him that what that party has paid to a single online advertising company is equivalent to the DPP’s entire budget for online advertising.
“The DPP has twice published data concerning its campaign donations and expenditures. Chu should also make public the sources of his campaign funding and subject them to public scrutiny, so that voters can see whether he has tapped KMT assets to fund his campaign,” Lin said.
When reached by reporters for comment yesterday, Chu said he is considering making the accounts for his campaign office public.
“Tsai’s political donations account has been in existence for six months, while mine was set up only a month ago. We should wait some time before considering whether to release the information,” Chu said.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
Travel agencies in Taiwan are working to secure alternative flights for travelers bound for New Zealand for the Lunar New Year holiday, as Air New Zealand workers are set to strike next week. The airline said that it has confirmed that the planned industrial action by its international wide-body cabin crew would go ahead on Thursday and Friday next week. While the Auckland-based carrier pledged to take reasonable measures to mitigate the impact of the workers’ strike, an Air New Zealand flight arriving at Taipei from Auckland on Thursday and another flight departing from Taipei for Auckland on Saturday would have to
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS