The Taiwan Statebuilding Party on Thursday called for an end to “big money politics” and suggested limits on campaign spending for city and county councilor candidates in November’s local elections.
“We ask the government to enforce regulations to end ‘black gold’ influence in elections,” party official Chang Po-yang (張博洋) said at an event in Kaohsiung.
“Black gold” refers to the monetary influence of organized crime.
Photo: Wang Jung-hsiang, Taipei Times
For November’s city and county councilor elections, the party recommends a campaign spending cap of NT$3 million (US$101,163), Chang said, adding that parties should rely on idealistic young people and other volunteers to spread their messages.
Without spending constraints, Taiwanese politics is destined to become the exclusive domain of corporations, wealthy people, family dynasties and candidates with ties to organized crime, he said.
Media reported in 2018 that successful city council campaigns spent a minimum of NT$15 million, former party chief financial officer Chang Ting-ting (張婷婷) said.
“We even heard that one candidate for Kaohsiung City council in 2018 had spent NT$80 million,” she said. “That is an outrageous figure. A person could buy a luxury mansion in Taiwan for that money.”
Party executives and candidates at the event built a mock brick wall of cardboard and paper, with “bricks” displaying expensive campaign items such as promotions, television advertising, billboards, banquets, campaign trucks and brochure printing costs.
Party members took turns hammering bricks off the wall to represent knocking expensive items off of campaigns.
Wealthy people and powerful interests regularly spend more than NT$20 million to help a candidate win a seat, Chang Po-yang said, adding that councilors become more interested in helping donors recoup their “investment” rather than following up on promises.
“Big money” campaign funding has led to well-known scandals regarding office-assistant expenditures, and charges of fraud, bid-rigging and public-project embezzlement, he said.
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