The piggy banks from the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) “three little pigs” fundraising campaign will today be transported back to DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) national campaign headquarters in Banciao (板橋), New Taipei City (新北市).
The DPP launched the piggy bank campaign after the Control Yuan said in October it would launch an investigation into the party’s acceptance of three piggy banks donated by children on Oct. 9, because the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法) stipulates that only those eligible to vote are allowed to make political donations.
Although the DPP returned the piggy banks to the children, the incident sparked a piggy-bank craze among Tsai supporters, who put their donations in the piggy banks.
According to estimates provided by the party on Friday, the total amount of piggy banks -collected so far exceeded 110,000.
With today being the day when all the piggy banks collected by local campaigns and party headquarters will be sent to Tsai’s national campaign headquarters, the DPP said it planned to arrange the piggy banks into the shape of Taiwan and the outlying islands of Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, somewhere near the Banciao headquarters.
The DPP also plans to superimpose the Chinese characters for “Fair and Just” on “Taiwan,” emphasizing Tsai’s intent to run a campaign based on those tenets, in an effort to bring together ordinary Taiwanese in an alliance against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its support for large corporations.
DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said Tsai’s campaign headquarters had hired trucks to transport the piggy banks from counties and cities across the nation, adding that on average a large 20 tonne truck could hold about 5,000 piggy banks, while smaller 5 tonne to 6 tonnes trucks could carry about 1,000 piggy banks.
Tsai campaign office deputy news director Wu Chia-tien (吳甲天) said about 100 trucks would arrive at the headquarters today. Special plans are in place to ensure they do not all arrive at the same time and cause congestion in the area, he added.
Translated by Jake Chung
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