The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday blasted Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) piggy bank campaign, calling it a greedy scheme to fill Tsai’s already full pockets.
Former KMT legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) told a news conference at the legislature that it was preposterous for Tsai to launch a donation scheme to ask for money from impoverished people, when Tsai and her family have allegedly reaped billions of New Taiwan dollars in profit from land speculation.
“Tsai has paid lip service to housing justice. Last year, when campaigning for then-DPP Taoyuan mayoral candidate Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦), Tsai said the government should not serve as an accomplice for land speculators. Now the culprit could become [the leader of] our government next year,” Chiu said.
Chiu said it was the “biggest joke in the Republic of China’s [ROC] history” that someone born with a silver spoon in her mouth like Tsai would need to ask supporters to donate piggy banks filled with their hard-earned money.
Voters are urged to “buy and immediately refund” their piggy banks as a way of boycotting Tsai’s donation scheme, Chiu said, in an apparent reference to a controversial campaign targeting food products made by subsidiaries of the scandal-ridden Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團).
KMT caucus deputy whip Alicia Wang (王育敏) asked how Tsai could face her conscience after taking money probably saved on food by her supporters.
An estimated 150,000 piggy banks have been given out since August to DPP supporters.
Chiu and other KMT lawmakers have accused Tsai of engaging in speculation on rezoned lands in Taipei, including two plots measuring 477 ping and 644 ping (1,577m2 and 2,129m2) in Neihu District (內湖).
They claimed that both lots were purchased by Tsai’s family in 1980 and sold in 2008 and 2010 for a combined profit of at least NT$3.4 billion.
When a reporter from the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times sister newpaper) asked why the KMT still accepted political donations when it sits on huge illegal assets and why did it constitute land speculation when Tsai’s family owned the lots for as long as three decades before selling them, Chiu lashed out at the late Rong San Lin (林榮三) — the publisher of the two papers.
“Lin did not have the right to launch his own media outlets. He was a land speculator himself,” Chiu said.
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