The Executive Yuan said yesterday that it did not rule out the possibility of regulating "soft" political donations in the future, even though a draft of the statute regarding the management of political donations
The draft, which will proceed to the Legislative Yuan for further review and final approval, would ban politicians from accepting campaign funding from certain groups and individuals, including those from other countries.
The Cabinet hopes to push through the bill during the current legislative session.
According to Minister without Portfolio Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮), who was responsible for reviewing the draft, the Cabinet has so far targeted only the "hard money" donations for election campaigns, but could also choose to regulate "soft money" donations to political parties that are not used specifically for campaigning.
"If we can overcome certain technical problems, there's a possibility that we'll include the regulation of `soft money' in the law," Yeh said.
"Hard money" can be used for activities such as advertisements that educate voters about issues but don't explicitly tell people to vote for a specific candidate.
Addressing a press conference held after the weekly closed-door Cabinet-affairs meeting, Cabinet Spokesman Chuang Suo-hang
"As the bill is designed to make the finances and activities of parties more open and transparent, its passage will help push one step forward the development of democracy and partisan politics," Chuang quoted Premier Yu Shyi-kun as saying.
Under the draft, politicians or those intending to run for public office would be banned from accepting campaign funding from certain groups or individuals.
These include state-owned enterprises, institutions that have investment or procurement contracts with the government, companies that have operated at a loss for a long time, non-profit or charity-oriented social groups and people and organizations from China, Hong Kong and Macau.
Those who do accept donations from people and organizations from China, Hong Kong or Macau could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
The draft also identifies three entities that can accept political donations. They are local political parties, national political groups and candidates running for elected office.
The draft sets an annual limit on declared individual contributions. For political parties, the limit is NT$200,000 per individual; for candidates it is NT$40,000.
Companies are limited to annual donations of NT$4 million to political parties and NT$800,000 to individual candidates.
The draft also limits anonymous donations to NT$2,000 and these donations cannot make up more than 10 percent of the funding of a political party, group or candidate.
Should anonymous donations make up more than 10 percent of total funding, the excess must be used for charitable purposes within two years or else given to the government.
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