Pigs Take Wing, Ma counters with a Talisman

The DPP's increasingly potent piggy bank campaign is really irking the KMT. The Taipei Times editorialized:

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a lot to thank the Control Yuan for. If Control Yuan members had not instructed the party to return the piggy banks donated to DPP Chairperson Tsai Ying-wen’s (蔡英文) presidential campaign by three young triplets because they violated the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法), the party would never have hit upon the idea of a “little pigs month,” distributing piggy banks to supporters, who are then encouraged to return them filled with donations.

It has been a fabulously successful initiative, so much so that the nation’s shelves have been stripped of piggy banks by people wanting to do their bit for Tsai’s campaign.

The campaign has been so successful that the KMT stooped to accusing the DPP of using children as a campaign tool in soliciting piggy banks from the public. Tsai Ing-wen, the DPP candidate, riposted that such fund raising activities are normal in democratic countries.

In keeping with Ma's sudden and temporary outbreak Taiwaneseness, which will be instantly cured on Jan 15, 2012, the KMT in the south has attempted to counter the popularity of the piggy banks with its "Taiwan Talisman," a red colored amulet with the characters for "Taiwan Peace" (a TT image). The amulets are dead on: to make peace with China will certainly make Taiwan red.

More seriously, one reads in the Taipei Times (couldn't find a counterpart in the China Post) that KMT candidates in the south are claiming a lack of support....

“The election outlook is not bad, it’s very bad ... The president said the government has invested hundreds of billions in the south, but people in rural towns have not seen it. What voters know about is the NT$316 increase to farmers’ [monthly] pensions, which has become a laughing matter,” KMT Legislator Chung Chao-ho (鍾紹和) said.

Many legislators are advocating handing out public cash for all sorts of things. See, if I promise you thousands from the public till for your vote, it is not vote buying, but if I pay you hundreds of my own campaign funds to vote for me, that's vote buying. Isn't democracy wonderful?

I know reports like this one and another in the TT claiming that KMT supporters are worried must be cheering to those of us on the pro-Taiwan side. But let's recall that southern KMT legislators worship at Our Lady of Perpetual Complaint when it comes to the generosity of the northern mainlander elites they serve. They always say things like this around election time. It's not difficult to find reminders, this one from the China Post in 2007 when I was writing about the "southern legislators" (=Taiwanese KMT) and how they were kvetching about the "Ma troop" that was then coming into power in the KMT as the 2008 election loomed.

Of course, the Ma-Wang match is beneficial to the KMT not only in winning the elections but also for the sake of party unity as Wang is a highly respected native Taiwanese, a fact that definitely helps the KMT to win support of the locals.

As to the second question, as a native Taiwanese, Wang will surely be a plus to Ma in terms of ethnical balance since Ma is regarded as a "mainlander."

But, as to the other part of the question, the answer is that, as current political developments indicate, even with Wang on the ticket, there is no guarantee that Ma will win the presidency in 2008.

In fact, there is an increasing possibility that Ma may lose in view of the downward slip of his popularity.

If only Ma had actually lost....

So don't get too excited, no matter which side you are on. In many of its major themes, this election is unfolding as they often do. The sad part, noted by Dafydd Fell in his sturdy summary of the election to date:

From my own observations of the national press, it seems the legislative campaigns, overshadowed by the race for the presidency, have completely disappeared.

So true. Too bad Frozen Garlic has complained in his last two posts that he's bored with this election. His work on the previous legislative elections has been stellar. FG! Wake Up!
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Daily Links:

• D Fell at SOAS with the campaign story so far.
• The Writing Baron with pics and prose about Japanese troupe visiting Taiwan to say thanks for Fukushima donations.
• Drew with one of his best posts ever, lovely 200 km ride through central Taiwan's mountains.

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