KMT to meet Cabinet over controversial party assets

"We want the state assets to be returned to the people and the nation."

Lee Teng-hui, former president

The Cabinet and Chinese Nation-alist Party (KMT) are scheduled to discuss today how the party should return assets that it inappropriately acquired during its 50-year reign as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) continues to hound the KMT leadership over the issue.

"We'll start with seven cinemas owned by the KMT and the two buildings and see how things go from there," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday.

The KMT will hand over the two buildings -- the Shih Chien Building (實踐大樓) and the Shih Chien Hall (實踐堂) on Chunghua Road, Taipei -- to the state-owned Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油), which bankrolled the construction of the buildings.

The seven movie cinemas, which are located throughout the nation, are to be transferred from the KMT-related Central Motion Picture Corp (中央電影公司), which now owns them.

Premier Yu Shyi-kun is scheduled to preside over a meeting of the Cabinet's National Asset Management Committee tomorrow to further discuss the issue.

During a TV interview yesterday afternoon, Yu called on KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) to "honestly, sincerely and candidly" tackle the problem of its party assets and return those inappropriately acquired during its 50-year rule.

"While Lien pledged to make public after the last presidential poll its party assets acquired during its administration, he has not yet put his promise into practice and I suspect he'll forget all about it after next year's presidential election," Yu told the program's host.

The KMT should "honestly" face history and tell the public about how it acquired its so-called "party assets" and make public their selling prices and buyers, Yu said.

The KMT should also "sincerely" keep its promises of making public its dubious party assets.

The party should also "candidly" return assets improperly obtained and endorse the bill regarding the disposition of assets improperly obtained by political parties (政黨不當取得財產處理條例) in the legislature.

The Cabinet sent the bill to the legislature in September last year but the draft has made little progress after 25 rounds of cross-party negotiations.

Yu also dismissed the pan-blue camp's allegation that the DPP was raising the issue again now because of the upcoming presidential election.

"It's indisputably untrue," Yu said. "We've been trying to tackle the problem since the DPP came to power but things haven't been going well because we don't enjoy a majority in the legislature."

Responding to the KMT's complaint that the DPP should target former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who served as the KMT chairman for 12 years, Yu said that the KMT was simply "shifting its responsibility."

"We don't really care who takes the helm of the KMT because it's the party that we're after," he said. "We want the state assets to be returned to the people and the nation not to any particular individual or party."

Yu said that it is an urgent and serious matter to ask the KMT to return those party assets improperly acquired because the party is speeding up efforts to dispose of them.