Sun, Jan 04, 2004 page3

• KMT challenges the president to detail his wealth

  TIT FOT TAT In response to the DPP's use of Lien Chan's wealth as a campaign issue, the KMT said the president's assets had increased dramatically despite tough economic times

  • By Fiona Lu / STAFF REPORTER
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  For the last week or 10 days, members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) have been saying that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) owes the public an explanation of an increase in his assets during his term, while the country has suffered through a recession.

  The KMT has made these public challenge in response to ruling the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) criticisms of KMT Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) assets.

  

  Chiou I-jen, secretary-general to the president, makes a gesture as a TV set shows Chinese Nationalist Party Chairman Lien Chan after Lien filed a libel suit against President Chen Shui-bian on Friday.

  PHOTO: CHEN TSE-MING, TAIPEI TIMES

  The KMT has said it was odd that Chen's wealth had increased despite a slump in the national economy that has had a negative impact on most people's pocketbooks.

  On Friday, while the KMT chairman conducted a press conference to discuss his personal assets, the KMT made the claim that Chen had made a great fortune from his investments in stocks and funds over the past two years.

  The KMT said that Chen had realized a 125 percent increase in his investments in stocks and funds, according to annual reports from the Control Yuan from 2000 to 2002.

  The KMT indicated that these investments were worth an estimated NT$74.9 million at the end of 2002, while two years before they had been worth NT$33.29 million.

  Chen's gains were contrasted by the KMT to its chairman's losses. The KMT said that Lien's income from stocks and fund investments had shrunk 22 percent since 1999.

  The KMT claimed that Lien's investments in stock and funds in 1999 were worth NT$1 billion, a number that decreased to NT$0.8 billion four years later due to the recession under Chen's government.

  "Under the DPP government, Lien lost 3 percent of his wealth, just as the general public has over the past three years. But Chen's wealth has gone in the opposite direction," said KMT Spokesman Alex Tsai (蔡正元).

  Tsai said that though the DPP keeps hinting that Lien's mother was the key to Lien's accumulation of wealth, and mentions that Lien's father's was a government official at that time, it is also arguable that Wu Shu-chen (吳淑珍), Chen's wife, had practiced insider trading to double her investments in stock and funds.

  Presidential Official Spokesman James Huang (黃志芳) called Tsai's accusation "false, and it was made to blacken the president's reputation."

  Huang said that the 2001 report on Chen's stock and fund investments included a NT$48.51 million subsidy granted by the government for Chen's participation in the 2000 election. Including those funds in the report complied with a new rule on property reports promulgated by the Control Yuan.

  Chen and Wu used the electoral subsidy for charitable purposes, which means that the president's holdings in investments in fact amounted to NT $15.09 million, Huang said.

  That sum was less than the sum Chen reported in 2000 to the Control Yuan in the same category.

  Chen's wealth decreased by NT$3.29 million from the NT$18.38 million in investments given in the 2000 report, Huang said,saying that the KMT had analyzed the figures incorrectly.

  Last month, the KMT contended that Chen had gone from a multimillionaire to a billionaire after his career as an elected official started with his winning the 1994 Taipei mayoral election.

  The KMT, while asking, "How could a civil servant make so much money," said that Chen and his wife had made more than NT$30 million in profits from securities after Chen's mayoral term ended in 1998.

  In his capacity as president, Chen has reported on his property to the Control Yuan for the past three years.

  Throughout those years the president has retained ownership in eight pieces of property -- seven in Taipei City and one in Tainan County, where he was born the son of a tenant farmer.

  On the 2000 and 2001 reports he was listed as the owner of six houses -- five of them in Taipei and one in his hometown. He had bought two more houses before he reported on his personal property in 2002.

  The bank accounts of the president and his wife fluctuated from NT$13.33 million in 2000 to NT$6.65 million in 2001 to NT$15.67 million in 2002. The 2002 report stated that part of the couple's savings were being used for charity.

  As for gains from dealing negotiable securities, a subject that has stirred a lot of controversy, Chen and Wu reported to the Control Yuan that their investment wealth was estimated to have been NT$18.38 million in 2000, with a sharp increase to NT$40.11 million in 2001. The 2002 figure came in at NT$63.60 million, which included the electoral subsidy of NT48.51 million.

  The reported gain in Chen and his wife's securities investments do not jibe with the KMT's claim on Friday that the investments amounted NT$74.90 million.

  KMT Legislator Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) said that calling attention to Chen's gains in wealth helped achieve balance in news coverage and in public perceptions of the assets issue.

  "The KMT was forced to fight back because the DPP never quits attacking Lien's properties and the KMT's assets," Cho said.

  But the DPP's hopes of winning the election by exploiting the assets issue were slim, Cho said.

  "Everyone knows that Lien is rich. His family's wealth and the party's assets are old issues about which voters would have demonstrated their resentment in previous elections, if they could not accept Lien's wealth," Cho said.

  The KMT was prepared to confront the DPP on the property issue, Cho said, as "the KMT will divulge more of Chen's abuses to combat the DPP's ill will toward Lien and the KMT."

  Tsai followed through on Cho's statement yesterday.

  The spokesman requested that Chen detail his connections to any enterprise chaired by his family members.

  Tsai singled out the Formosa Foundation, a brainchild of Chen during his mayoral career, now chaired by Wu.

  The spokesman said that Chen should elaborate on the foundation's operations to prove to the public that it is complying with laws.

  Political analyst Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), an assistant fellow of politics at the Academia Sinica, said that the Chen's wealth could impair to a certain extent his hopes of winning the election.

  "His family's wealth will unavoidably weaken his image from the 2000 election as a candidate from a poor peasant household," Hsu said.

  But Hsu said that the story of Chen growing wealthy through his own efforts could illustrate Taiwan's advancement in democracy and economics. Hsu said that the DPP should consider framing the debate in these terms in order to make Chen's wealth a positive campaign issue.

  DPP Legislator Lin Chung-cheng (林忠正) called on both sides to scrutinize whether there is any illegality in the rival camp's assets, rather than quarrel over the means by which the wealth was obtained.

  "A fraudulent report on property to the Control Yuan would lead to a legal procedure, which would be settled according to the law, whereas questions about the way assets were obtained bring about moral examination. The fact is that no one could pass a morality test that has very high criteria," said Lin, a former professor of economics at National Taiwan University.
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