The latest TV campaign commercial for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-People First Party alliance targets the first family.
The ad, released last Friday, accused the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of undermining the nation's economy by describing a father's inability to purchase luxury goods for his children.
The ad features a young man driving a Jaguar and a young couple holding a baby wearing a bright gold necklace. A gloomy-looking father in the ad talks to his young child sitting next to him in a train car and asks, "Do you like it? Dad can't afford it."
Poking fun at the first family, the scene of excessiveness insinuated that President Chen Shui-bian's (
According to the KMT, the TV spot was meant to convey the message that the first family, surrounded by luxury, had grown distant from the common people.
"The ad merely wishes to reflect reality and the people's voice," said KMT spokesman Alex Tsai (蔡正元).
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator Chien Lin Whei-jun (
"It is a part of Taiwanese culture to present a gold necklace to the family's first-born grandchild -- especially when it is a boy -- when the baby reaches the age of one," Chien Lin said.
"By making an issue of what is merely a common practice of Taiwanese culture, the ad shows that the KMT-PFP alliance lacks an understanding of Taiwanese culture," she said.
"I think the ad is nonsense and meaningless," Chien Lin said.
Making light of the pan-blue camp's ad, first lady Wu Shu-chen (
The DPP has responded to the blue-camp ad with an ad of its own, saying, "Do you like it? Then Dad will steal it for you."
The KMT then questioned Chen and his wife's large growing personal fortune.
Saying that while others have had their personal wealth shrink, the alliance accused Chen and his wife of accumulating a fortune of NT$400 million, asking "How has Chen, son of a poor farmer, grown to be a billionaire by being a public official?"
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