A day after Vice President Lien Chan (
Premier Vincent Siew (
"Minister of the Interior Huang Chu-wen (
Lien pledged on Sunday that the KMT will put its profit-oriented business interests in trust after the enactment of a "Political Party Law."
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony for his campaign headquarters in Taipei, Lien proposed that laws be passed to regulate lobby groups in the Legislative Yuan and donations to political parties. This would help to clean up Taiwan politics, the KMT included, he said.
Siew said other bills, such as those clarifying lobbying rules, and those requiring public servants to reject offers seeking favoritism in public affairs, will soon be passed into law. This, he said, will create a fairer environment for political competition.
Interior minister Huang said the bills regulating political parties' activities are highly political by their nature, and may have certain negative effects on the political arena in the short term. But he also said he believed they will strengthen Taiwan's party politics, and will facilitate positive interaction among parties in the long term.
Ministry officials have been quoted as saying there is no decision yet on exactly how parties should be restricted in their business activities, but that the ministry would continue to allow them to invest in profit-oriented businesses -- as long as such assets are entrusted to institutional managers.
But critics said political parties should be banned from being involved in any profit-oriented business whatsoever.
"It is meaningless for a party to entrust its assets, because those assets ultimately still belong to the party," said Wu Tung-yeh (
"It is easy to write a party law, but it is difficult to deal with the KMT's assets," he said. "Its businesses are everywhere, in every walk of life."
DPP lawmaker Su Huan-chih (
"The KMT has already successfully laundered its assets by moving them into the hands of a large number of shareholders through so-called `privatization' of its companies," Su said. "The trick is that the KMT still easily controls these companies, even with less than a majority shareholding."
In any case, regulating parties' business affiliations by law is something that should be decided by broad consensus among the major parties, said Herman Chiang (
Chiang agrees with an article the interior ministry is planning to put into its political party bill: that government subsidies for elections go directly to parties, rather than to individual candidates. Currently, a subsidy of NT$30 is paid to candidates for every vote that they gain.
"The money should belong to the parties," Chiang said. "It is ridiculous that a candidate whose campaign bill is footed by his party gets the subsidy and could become a millionaire after an election." He referred to independent presidential candidate James Soong (
Siew also has suggested that election regulations be revised to combat vote-buying and to further restrict the participation of underworld figures or those with criminal records in elections.
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