Ma was spending NT$3.71 million a day on campaign appearances, including airplane trips around the island, the DPP said.

The president also chairs the ruling Kuomintang, a combination of jobs which has elicited accusations that Ma is failing to keep the public and the private domain separate.

In one single day Sunday, Ma traveled to Kinmen near the Chinese coast, to Yunlin in Central Taiwan and to Ilan in the Northeast, using the presidential Air Force One plane for party purposes, DPP lawmaker William Lai said.

In just one day, the president spent the amount of money the average Taiwanese citizen needs to work four years for, Lai said.

The KMT should use its own assets to pay for the trips and not let the taxpayer be victimized, Lai told a news conference.

The Presidential Office said the plane's fuel bill, estimated by the DPP at more than NT$1 million, was being paid by the ruling party, though the government was still responsible for the cost of security.

In other election news, DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen announced yesterday that the opposition party was supporting incumbent Vice County Magistrate Chang Chih-ming in Hualien County.

The DPP did not nominate a candidate of its own in the East Coast county, where the ruling camp has split three ways.

County government official Tu Li-hua became the official KMT candidate after defeating former Department of Health Minister Yeh Ching-chuan in the primaries, while KMT lawmaker Fu Kun-chi launched an independent bid, earning him expulsion from the ruling party.

Incumbent Hualien County Magistrate Hsieh Shen-shan, a veteran national KMT politician, supports his deputy, Chang.

The DPP choice for him was meant to break the KMT monopoly over the county, Tsai said yesterday during a visit to the candidate's campaign headquarters.

The opposition party is optimistic about keeping control over the counties of Yunlin, Chiayi and Pingtung, but is also hopeful of reconquering Ilan County, for 24 years one of its strongholds until Lu Kuo-hua won the area for the KMT in 2005.

Fears of violence also grew as a candidate for county magistrate on the outlying island of Kinmen, Hsu Ching-min, crashed his car into the headquarters of a rival late Sunday.

Nobody was injured in the incident, police said.

The KMT called for calm as both Ma and former Premier Frank Hsieh were scheduled to campaign in the same town yesterday evening, Kuanhsi in Hsinchu County.

A similar walkabout in Hsinfeng Township last week resulted in scuffles between the two sides.

Hsieh accused police of restricting his movements, allowing KMT supporters to hit him with flagpoles.

Some people wearing KMT campaign jackets at the event later turned out to be National Security Bureau agents working as bodyguards for Ma.

The election has also been marred by allegations of widespread vote buying.

In Chiayi City, an inspector for the local election commission named Huang Tso-yung admitted he had bought votes on behalf of a candidate for the local city council.

The DPP candidate for mayor, lawmaker Twu Shiin-jer, protested outside the city's election commission yesterday, promising NT$1 million to anyone able to reveal vote buying by his KMT opponent.

DPP lawmakers said vote buyers were getting smarter and trying out new techniques, such as paying voters to distribute leaflets or to sit in at voting offices Saturday.