Former president 
Tsai Ing-wen and Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Lai Jui-lung of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) visited a sheltered workshop in Kaohsiung's Zuoying district on September 6 to try making its pastries. They also asked how charity purchasing had been affected since the Presidential Office's state affairs fund was cut and frozen. The workshop, Zhongwai Bakery, was founded in 1885, and Tsai urged the public to support disadvantaged people, the Liberty Times reported.
Why were workshops short of orders? Sheltered workshops in Kaohsiung and Pingtung, whose Mid-Autumn gift-box sales CNA reported were hit by the Legislative Yuan's cut and freeze of the fund, each fielded Kuomintang (KMT) inquiries about boxes that never became orders. Manman Hengchun Bakery, a Pingtung workshop, wrote on Facebook that KMT headquarters had asked whether it could handle 300 boxes; it said yes, then waited two days with no order and no follow-up. The executive director of Kaohsiung's Xiaocao Care Association later posted that a KMT caller had clearly asked for 300 boxes, but the official handling it answered only once afterwards, saying superiors would be consulted. The association had already ordered packaging.
Who bought the boxes? Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an paid for 300 Hengchun boxes out of his own pocket, his elder sibling Pan Fang-chuan, a DPP Pingtung county councillor, told CNA. It was the workshops' busiest ordering season, Pan Fang-chuan said. Lai Jui-lung, who had already bought 500 boxes, said on September 5 he would take the unfilled 300-box order in full so outside factors would not hurt the workers' livelihoods. A box of mooncakes carries support for the stable lives of people with disabilities, he said.
How did the parties respond? Su Ching-chuan, who chairs the KMT's Pingtung chapter, said the chapter would buy 300 boxes if the Hengchun workshop could produce them, CNA reported. His DPP counterpart, Hsu Fu-kuei, thanked Pan Men-an and called the episode a mess the KMT had made but could not clean up. Ko Chih-en, the KMT's Kaohsiung mayoral candidate, told reporters she would need to check with party headquarters about the orders, but that if Kaohsiung's workshops had truly been hurt she would buy double, 600 boxes. DPP Kaohsiung city councillor Chiu Chun-hsien, answering a Facebook post in which Ko said she backed every workshop order, blamed the trouble on her "blue-white" camp and said she was no different from Weng Hsiao-ling and Fu Kun-chi, the Liberty Times reported.
Figures referenced: Tsai Ing-wen. — JudgeMarket.
