The Cabinet approved a bill for handling parties' "ill-gotten" assets at a meeting yesterday.
The proposed statute on the disposition of assets improperly obtained by political parties (
Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said the Cabinet decided to speed up the process of reviewing the statute after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said in his Double Ten National Day speech that returning improperly obtained party assets is a priority for the government.
Under the Cabinet's draft law, all party assets except membership dues, campaign funds donated by the public and businesses, and government election subsidies, will be defined as "ill-gotten" assets that must be returned to the national coffers or local governments.
One provision states that any property given away or sold at unreasonable prices by political parties and their affiliated groups after April 6, 2001 will also be defined as ill-gotten assets. The provision is aimed at stopping parties, especially the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), from selling their assets before the bill becomes law.
The bill says all parties must report their assets within six months of the law taking effect, including those listed by the Control Yuan in its April 6, 2001 report to the Executive Yuan, as well as those entrusted to third parties.
Violators will be subject to fines of between NT$500,000 (US$15,000) and NT$2.5 million. Those who refuse to conform will be fined every 10 days and after five fines, their assets will be defined as ill-gotten.
Yesterday was the first time KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) attended the weekly Cabinet meeting since taking over the party chairmanship in August.
The premier said he was glad to see the Taipei mayor back at the Cabinet meeting, and that he was very happy to see Ma having a chitchat with acting Kaohsiung Mayor Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭).
"It has been a long time since both the Taipei and Kaohsiung mayors have both shown up for a meeting. It seems to me that it is a great day for a reunion and I am rather glad," Hsieh said.
Cabinet Secretary-General and Spokesman Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) told the press conference after the meeting that Ma did not comment on the proposed statute.
"He [Ma] was reading his documents very carefully. But when this issue was brought up, he looked up to the premier and began to listen to the conversation carefully," Cho said. "But he did not make any comments on the issue at all."
Cho said Ma left the meeting before the Cabinet approved the proposed statute.
Taipei City Government Deputy Secretary-General Liu Pao-kuei (劉寶貴) stayed for the rest of the meeting, but Liu did not comment on the proposal either.
"I can say that this proposal was approved by `every one' of the Cabinet members during the discussion," Cho said.
When approached by reporters later in the day, Ma denounced the proposed statute, saying it was against "the rule of law" and the Constitution.
"Not all of a party's assets are obtained improperly. For example, the KMT bought the National Development and Research Institute with its own money, and there is nothing improper about it," Ma said.
In other news, Hsieh told the Cabinet meeting that the government won't abandon a plan to develop the Chunxiao oil and gas field in the East China Sea, which is in an area also claimed by Japan and China.
``We won't give up our rights to the Chunxiao oil field,''Hsieh said. ``We'll ask the coast guard to step up patrols.''
Additional reporting by Mo Yan-chih
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,