Ma comes under fire at city council

Taipei Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) dual role as mayor and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman once again drew criticism from pan-green city councilors yesterday as they condemned Ma's expansion of an elementary-school's property as an "excuse" to sell the property housing the Institute on Policy Research and Development.

Facing criticism during the question-and-answer session at the Taipei City Council, Ma departed from his customary mild manner to hit back at his attackers, saying that the pan-green councilors' criticism was "unreasonable."

He also said that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) "did not respect professionals" and acted like an "autocratic emperor" for saying that the Ministry of the Interior would not approve rezoning for the block of land.

Ma been invited by the city council to deliver a special report on the rezoning of the land and possible expansion of the Yongjiang Elementary School.

Because sale of the KMT property requires both the city government and the ministry to approve the rezoning of the land, a number of councilors questioned Ma over whether he had improperly taken advantage of his mayoral post to benefit the KMT.

"Most KMT assets were illegally acquired. As Taipei mayor, Ma helped the KMT with rezoning and covering up for the party to sell its illegal property," said Luo Zong-sheng (羅宗勝), a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) city councilor.

Ma interrupted Luo to defend the sale.

"It is unreasonable to ask the KMT to donate all of its assets for no reason ... Councilor Luo is being unreasonable and is using abusive language with me," Ma said in Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese).

Ma the sale of the institute was legal. He also said the donation of part of the land to the school was proposed by the school itself.

When the school approached him with the proposal to expand its property to improve its students' learning environment, Ma said he promised to persuade the KMT to donate part of the institute's property for the expansion in 2002. However, the party did not answer the request until 2003, he said.

"Any reasonable person would support the expansion once they saw how jammed the current school site is ... Through the donation, the city government only needs to spend NT$30 million and students can enjoy a more spacious learning environment," Ma said.

The KMT signed a contract to sell the building housing the institute in August for NT$4.3 billion (US$133 million) on the assumption that the city government would approve rezoning the land from governmental use to residential and that part of the land would be be used by the school.

Several councilors suggested that the city government make public the contract the KMT signed with the buyer, Yuan Li Construction.

Ma, however, rejected the idea, saying the city government "has no right to publish the contract."