A government program designed to recover the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) stolen assets was the subject of heated debate yesterday as the Government Information Ministry (GIO) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers traded barbs on accusations of deceit and abuse of public funds.
Under the program headed by the Cabinet's Research Development and Evaluation Commission, the government would allocate NT$9.5 million (US$289,000) to hold exhibitions around the country on its campaign to retrieve the KMT's stolen assets.
GIO Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) yesterday said that the program was a "very good" plan that a "responsible" government should implement.
He was responding to KMT Legislator Lai Shyh-bao's (
Lai also accused the commission of adopting a limited bidding approach in its search for a company to undertake the exhibitions in order to let specific parties profit from the program.
"Both of the accusations are wrong," Shieh said.
Shieh said the Democratic Progressive Party government came up with the program for the good of the public and the nation, and not for the party itself.
Spending NT$9.5 million to get back the KMT's stolen assets, which are worth tens of billion of NT dollars for the public is sound government policy, he said.
Shieh added that the commission has adopted an open, public -- and not a limited -- bidding approach, meaning there is no limit to the number of bidders.
Responding to Shieh's comments, KMT Legislator Lu Shiow-yen (
The DPP has called on the government to hold a referendum on retrieving the KMT's stolen assets in tandem with next year's presidential election, claiming it had collected sufficient signatures from the public to validate the request.
Meanwhile, the commission yesterday issued a statement dismissing Lai's accusation about the bidding approach, saying it had not set any limitation on the number of bidders.
The statement said that the bidding conformed to stipulations in the Government Procurement Law (
DPP caucus whip Wang Sing-nan (
"If the KMT refuses to return the assets, whatever it says about giving Taiwan hope would only be lies," he told a press conference.
Wang said it is correct for the Cabinet to hold an exhibition on the stolen assets because the public would then be able to understand how the KMT stole them.
DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG
Also see story:
Editorial: The albatross of KMT party assets
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
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
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