Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
Lien, who is challenging Chen in the upcoming presidential election, argued that the DPP had falsely claimed that his personal assets were worth NT$20 billion, while the true value was NT$1.34 billion.
"With the election approaching, the DPP recently attacked me personally with an array of false accusations with regard to my family's assets and how they were acquired," Lien said at a press conference accompanied by lawyers and accountants.
Lien was referring to the DPP's latest television advertising campaign, which called into question how Lien and his father were able to accumulate their fortune while just civil servants.
The DPP also distributed 500,000 campaign pamphlets last Monday accusing the Lien family of illegally accumulating assets worth NT$20 billion.
"I can no longer sit in silence in view of the acts that undermine my reputation and negatively influence the people's trust in politics ... I have no choice but to take legal action against the DPP," Lien said before proceeding to file the suit at the Taipei Prosecutors' Office.
This is the first time in Taiwan's political history that an opposition leader has filed a lawsuit against the incumbent president.
Chen's being president protects him from criminal prosecution unless he is charged with committing an act of rebellion or treason. However, the Taipei Prosecutors' Office will process the suits against the other three defendants: DPP Secretary-General Chang Chun-hsiung (
In a bid to rebut the DPP's claims concerning the Lien family's assets, Alex Tsai (蔡正元), spokesman for the KMT-People First Party (PFP), revealed detailed accounts of Lien's personal assets broken down into cash saving, stocks, bonds, real estate and others.
Tsai also presented figures for Chen's assets, saying that the value of Chen's stocks and bonds had increased 125 percent between 2000 and 2002, while Lien's had decreased by 22 percent from 1999 to 2003.
Tsai said he wondered "whether any secret deals were involved that enabled Chen to make such a rewarding investment in stocks and bonds."
Noting that Lien and his wife had together donated 15 percent of their assets, worth NT$250 million, to reconstruction efforts following the Sept. 21, 1999, earthquake, while Chen and his wife donated only 2 percent of their assets, worth NT$2 million, Tsai asked, "Who of the two really loves Taiwan more?"
Another alliance spokesman, Yu Tzu-shiang (
"Lien's property amounts to a mere 189 ping, yet the DPP exaggerated it 106 times in its campaign pamphlet and said it is big enough to build five Tienmu baseball fields on," Yu said. "The public should abandon a party that resorts to such negative campaigning."
Also see story:
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS