TSU says KMT-PFP stonewalling poses significant danger to national security

The TSU legislative caucus slammed the pan-blue alliance yesterday for stonewalling the passage of a "national loyalty check" bill.

Worse still, the TSU caucus said the KMT and PFP pushed for amending the Civil Servant Employment Law (公務人員任用法) last year to delete the provision requiring loyalty checks for all government employees.

The TSU caucus claimed that the pan-blue alliance's moves have created holes in the nation's security system and left room for agents from China to infiltrate Taiwan.

The TSU caucus was responding to its KMT and PFP counterparts' recent criticism of National Security Council Secretary-General Kang Ning-hsiang (康寧祥) for employing a person with alleged business interests in China to serve as his personal aide.

The alliance said Kang's employment of Chang Pei-chen (張佩珍) to provide counseling in Chinese economic affairs could lead to the leaking of classified information to Beijing authorities.

Chang, who had devoted herself to research on the Chinese economy for 20 years at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research before she joined the council on April 1, resigned from her council post last Saturday.

Her resignation came after a local newspaper reported that her husband had used her name to set up a company in Hong Kong which cooperated with the business arm of China's Ministry of Railways in operating land development deals in Shanghai.

TSU legislative whip Chien Lin Huei-jyun (錢林慧君) said at a news conference yesterday that Chang's case, as well as the alleged involvement of a middle-rank technician at the military-run Chung Shan Institute of Technology and Science in a ring that spied for China, have exposed problems in the nation's security system.

Chien Lin said the pan-blue alliance is to blame for the loose security checks conducted on civil servants.

She pointed out that the TSU came up with a host of draft bills in May last year with a view to tightening the protection of military intelligence and other national secrets.

However, Chien Lin said, the KMT and the PFP had boycotted screening of these bills. She said the two parties had stonewalled the transfer of the national loyalty bill to the legislature's Judiciary Committee for deliberation 17 times.

Without the enactment of this bill, Chien Lin said, government agencies cannot conduct stringent loyalty checks on would-be civil servants.