The KMT yesterday countered the DPP's recent series of TV commercials in which a number of KMT lawmakers are identified as being "barbarous" for killing government budgets.
In addition to publishing advertisements in local newspapers, the KMT legislative caucus prompted government officials to attend a press conference where they displayed documents meant to disprove the allegations.
KMT legislative caucus whip Lee Cheng-chong (
"The DPP government did not take the budgets seriously. But it is now trying to distract public attention by defaming the opposition," Lee said.
KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
In addition to the NT$13.1 billion supplementary budget for child welfare, computer lessons for school children and local anti-flood projects, the DPP has blamed the opposition for removing up to NT$70 billion earmarked for infrastructure budgets.
According to Lee, lawmakers requested the Executive Yuan to submit detailed plans to the legislature as soon as they discovered that they were not in the supplementary budget proposal sent by the Executive Yuan on March 23.
But the Executive Yuan did not submit the plans until May 17, and the plans that were sent were still inadequate, Lee said.
The Executive Yuan finally sent a 78-page document detailing its plans on June 5. However, the paper did not reach the legislature until the next day, after the review of the supplementary budget had ended, Lee added.
Also, Lee said the figure cited by the DPP was inaccurate because the infrastructure budgets killed by the opposition totaled only NT$66.8 billion, rather than NT$70 billion.
Of this NT$66.8 billion, NT$48.3 billion was cut with the approval of concerned agencies, which included state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp, Taiwan Power Company, Chunghwa Telecom and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Lee said.
Another NT$5.3 billion was killed based on an inter-party consensus because the allocation was suspected of being for pork-barrel spending, Lee said.
The KMT demanded that the DPP apologize for its false accusations or it would sue the party for slander tomorrow.
The DPP yesterday reiterated that its campaign commercials presented nothing but truth.
"The legislative documents have explicitly chronicled [the budget review process.] If they [opposition parties] intend to bring lawsuits [against the DPP], we'll file countersuits [against them]," party Secretary-general Wu Nai-jen (
Wu said that legislative paperwork showed that the Cabinet had allocated as little as NT$18,000 for Lian Chiang County (
To remove any doubt, the DPP yesterday distributed copies of the front page of the Cabinet's official documents on which the Cabinet acknowledged the legislature, as requested, had been given supplementary information on the budget plan on June 5.
Wu said that the party would soon mail all related documents to the accused legislators.
He added that the DPP would release similar ads in the near future to inform the public of how opposition parties are boycotting the DPP's rule to the detriment of the country.
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