It is an affront to both the rule of law and basic property rights that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has apparently been allowed to sell the building housing the Institute on Policy Research and Development and its land for NT$4.3 billion (US$133 million). The property is part of the huge pile of assets the KMT acquired through theft during its 50 years in power and something should be done to contest the party's right to dispose of it.
Much of the KMT's portfolio of theft-acquired riches was laundered during the 1990s through the stock market. Nevertheless, a Control Yuan investigation which reported in 2002 found more than 400 properties the party had acquired illegally and still retained, the vast majority of which it retains to this day, despite frequent claims that it is trying to clean up its act -- probably the reason, by the way, that the pan-blue camp refuses to let Control Yuan vacancies be filled with anyone other than their cronies, who will not look further into the KMT's kleptocratic history.
The DPP has constantly said that it is important to pass the draft law on improperly acquired party assets to strip the KMT of its ill-gotten gains. But since the DPP does not control the legislature this is not going to happen while this legislature sits, which gives KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) until January 2008 to sell off what he can. Given this situation, Cabinet spokesman Cho Jung-tai's (卓榮泰) remarks that, faced with this latest outrage, the government would ask the legislature to hurry up with a bill it has no intention of passing, seems disingenuous to say the least.
It is tempting to ask why this bill needs to be passed. After all, if the Control Yuan can determine that the properties have been illegally acquired then we would expect the courts to be able to do the same thing. If so, how can it be legal to sell such property? Does the legal system lack the necessary provisions to stop somebody selling something that they have acquired through unauthorized transfer, intimidation or simple theft?
Suppose a man buys a car, registers it in his brother's name then find that the brother has sold the car and pocketed the proceeds. There is a prima facie case to be made here, which would surely depend on establishing who paid for the car and what arrangement was made concerning the registration. The car buyer might or might not win his case, but he could at least contest it in court.
It is perplexing that in the current case no legal action has been taken to stop the sale until questions about ownership has been resolved by the court. From a political point of view, even were such a case to fail, it could hardly do the government any harm. Court hearings would draw attention to the extent of the KMT's plunder of Taiwan and the verdict would show how intolerable these thieves' impunity is.
The government may wish to defend itself by saying that the legal basis for such a case does not exist. If so, then it might as well admit that security of property, an absolute prerequisite for a free-market economy, is a joke. It sends out the message: Don't invest in Taiwan because your property can be stolen and you will have no redress.
If some form of legal challenge can be made, then why hasn't it been? If, in fact, it can't be made, then the idea of Taiwan as governed by the rule of law is a joke since that law is utterly inadequate to ensure basic rights. And if the law is a joke -- as the KMT, in fact, has said that it is -- then Taiwanese, increasingly frustrated by the KMT's impunity, might start to wonder if they should take the law into their own hands.
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows recently when he declared the era of American unipolarity over. He described America’s unrivaled dominance of the international system as an anomaly that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Now, he observed, the United States was returning to a more multipolar world where there are great powers in different parts of the planet. He pointed to China and Russia, as well as “rogue states like Iran and North Korea” as examples of countries the United States must contend with. This all begs the question:
Liberals have wasted no time in pointing to Karol Nawrocki’s lack of qualifications for his new job as president of Poland. He has never previously held political office. He won by the narrowest of margins, with 50.9 percent of the vote. However, Nawrocki possesses the one qualification that many national populists value above all other: a taste for physical strength laced with violence. Nawrocki is a former boxer who still likes to go a few rounds. He is also such an enthusiastic soccer supporter that he reportedly got the logos of his two favorite teams — Chelsea and Lechia Gdansk —
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS