Supporters of Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday used the occasion of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) first time chairing the Central Standing Committee meeting to criticize the sale of the building housing the KMT-affiliated Institute on Policy Research and Development.
They said the party should neither rush the sale nor donate part of the property to an adjacent elementary school.
Dismissing criticism of the sale, KMT Deputy Secretary-General Chang Che-shen (張哲琛) repeated earlier comments that the KMT was not obliged to wait for the block's zoning classification to be processed before selling the property.
He said the burden of risk should fall on the shoulders of the purchaser if the rezoning proposal failed to pass the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) and Taipei City Government's Urban Planning Commission.
"Part of the property will be donated to Taipei Municipal Yungchien Elementary School to expand its cramped campus, so the sale benefits Taipei City and not the KMT," he added.
The deal, however, drew criticism from Central Standing Committee members considered to be supporters of Wang. They said the party should not rush the sale and use its assets to solve a problem that was the city government's to solve.
"Handing land to Yungchien Elementary School should be the responsibility of the Taipei City Government. We are not obliged to solve this problem with our party assets," KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (
Huang said the sale had been politicized, especially after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said the ministry may not clear the proposal, and that the problem would not help the KMT in the year-end local government elections.
"The whole issue should be resolved in a more comprehensive and transparent way. I think we should slow down and offer a clearer explanation first before dealing with the problem of party assets," she said.
Also considered a Wang supporter, KMT Legislator Lee Chuan-chiao (
Ma defended the process, and said that the assets issue had not been discussed in committee before. The decision to invite committee members to share their opinions on the matter, therefore, showed that the process dealing with party-asset issues was transparent.
"We hope that through an open discussion, both party members and the public will know that we abide by laws when handling party assets," Ma said.
As to allegations that the city government would rubber-stamp the rezoning in the mayor's favor, Ma said, "It is not proper to say that."
"The Urban Planning Commission works independently. I can not guarantee the rezoning will be passed or not. Everything awaits their professional decision," he said.
The KMT signed a contract to sell the building to Yuan Lih Construction Corp for NT$4.3 billion (US$133 million) earlier this month, despite current zoning restrictions and claims that the property was stolen from the state.
Ma has said the money from the sale would be used to take care of party retirees and employees laid off as part of restructuring aiming to make the KMT "more efficient."
The sale of the building, located in the Muzha (
Meanwhile, the KMT Central Standing Committee yesterday said the party would start a"committee tour" of the nation with seven committee meetings to be held around Taiwan starting this month until November.
The party will invite local Central Standing Committee members, party representatives, legislators, city mayors and county commissioners, as well as local councilors, to attend.
According to KMT spokeswoman Cheng Li-wen (
The first committee meeting will be held in Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Penghu counties on Saturday week, followed by one in Chiayi and Tainan counties on Sept. 25.
The committee also announced the names of new officials. Liao Feng-teh (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater