Piggy Banks Rock the Election

Paul Mozur at WSJ chimed in with a piece on the Tsai campaign's use of piggy banks as a potent symbol in the upcoming election, which is now about two months away. After describing the hot piggy bank situation, he observes:

At a press conference on Monday, the campaign dubbed November “little pigs month,” and Ms. Tsai encouraged voters to “fatten the pigs” they received at home in preparation for the Jan. 14 election. She also likened the DPP to a “little pig” facing the “big wolf” of the Kuomintang, in part a jab at the large financial reserves the KMT retains from its decades of one-party autocratic rule over Taiwan.

According to disclosures to the Ministry of the Interior in 2010 the KMT had earnings of NT$3.53 billion, almost 80% of which came from dividends from investments. The DPP earned NT$626 million with no funds coming from dividends. In the same year the KMT had expenses of NT$2.88 billion while the DPP spent NT$541 million. (Report in Chinese)

A spokesman for the KMT said the piggy bank drive was simply a fundraising ploy and the party wouldn’t get involved by commenting, and that it deals with its assets in a fair, just, and legal manner.

Since Taiwan’s transition to democracy in the late 1980s and 1990s, the KMT has sold off some of its assets and it says much of the remainder of its assets are invested through its Central Investment Co., which it has tried to sell four times in recent years without finding a fair price, according to the spokesman. But critics have argued it continues to gain an unfair advantage from the income it earns off its assets, and it’s unclear what it will do with the cash it earns if it manages to sell the vehicle.

Do the math. As a big investment firm, Central Investment likely invests in large firms -- who are the biggest beneficiaries of the KMT-CCP cross-strait reapproachment. President Ma is both Chairman of the KMT and President of the government performing the negotiations. Move along folks, no conflict of interest to see here.

Interesting to see how the rhetoric has shifted -- when the KMT first arrived the locals would call the KMT the "pigs". Rituals in which pigs were sacrificed then took on a political double meaning, the more so because the KMT became increasingly bent on reshaping traditional religion as the Taiwanese practiced it, under the slogan of "Simplify Customs and Save Waste", deep into the 1970s. Indeed, the Taiwanese used to cover the pigs with colorful Nationalist political symbols, ostensibly demonstrating their loyalty to the regime in carrying out traditional religion, but since the pig was killed, the double meaning should be obvious.

Now the little pig has been adopted as a symbol of the opposition and of its commitment to little people and small donations vs the powerhouse political party that is one of the richest political parties on the planet.

And finally, for you lovers of historical irony, a keen and highly intelligent observer of local politics with a long memory passed around this old textbook from the early 1980s, showing kids donating their piggy banks out of the love of the ROC:

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