Taiwan KMT Chair Pays for 15,000 Mid-Autumn Gift Boxes, but Critic Says Damage Cannot Be Undone

Cheng Li-wun, chair of Taiwan’s Kuomintang, said she would take over all 15,000 Mid-Autumn Festival gift boxes after an order from sheltered workshops was canceled.

The cancellation followed a proposal by KMT legislator Weng Hsiao-ling to delete or freeze the Presidential Office’s entire budget for national affairs and confidential administrative expenses. Cheng said last week that she would take responsibility for purchasing the boxes. She later distributed pineapple-cake gift boxes from sheltered workshops to media members and disadvantaged families.

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Whether you use your own money or the KMT’s money, this cannot change the fact that your party’s cuts to the Presidential Office’s special funds in the Legislative Yuan damaged this public-interest effort.

Cheng stressed that the party’s additional expenses would come under her own name and that she would not spend any of the KMT’s money. “Party affairs’ additional expenses will be covered in my personal name. I will not spend a cent of the party’s money,” she said.

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Party affairs’ additional expenses will be covered in my personal name. I will not spend a cent of the party’s money.

Yeh Yao-yuan, a professor of international studies at St. Thomas University in the United States, criticized the move in a Facebook post. “Whether you use your own money or the KMT’s money, this cannot change the fact that your party’s cuts to the Presidential Office’s special funds in the Legislative Yuan damaged this public-interest effort,” he wrote.

Yeh added that Cheng’s personal decision to spend the money could not change the harm already caused. He said the KMT’s image would not improve simply because Cheng used her own funds, and cited Cheng, Fu Kun-chi and Weng Hsiao-ling as helping the party’s opponents. “I am really looking forward to the results of this year’s midterm elections,” he wrote.

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I am really looking forward to the results of this year’s midterm elections.