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.
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