A new election for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Standing Committee (CSC) is expected after a majority of committee members offered to resign over the party’s selective investigation into electoral bribery.
The wave of resignations, sparked by KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) and 27 other members, came amid claims by some party delegates that almost every CSC member had bribed delegates with gifts during election campaigns, highlighting the bribery culture in the CSC election.
The CSC used to be the center of the party’s power structure, its members meeting once a week with most senior party officials to discuss party matters and approve major policies.
Prior to a directive by then-KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in 2005 for a direct election of CSC members and the implementation of a district voting system, the CSC was elected by the 210 members of the Central Committee, which itself was elected by more than 1,600 party delegates.
Sean Lien (連勝文), son of former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and who is among those who resigned from the CSC, said the district voting system — which allows party delegates to cast votes at local branches — encouraged bribery during CSC elections.
“Vote-buying is getting worse because the system makes it easier for candidates to get a hold of the number of votes in a district,” he said.
Chen Ting-yun (陳釘雲), who also resigned, said the district voting system was the main reason behind the bribery problem.
“Gift-sending in the CSC election is a historical glitch and revoking the election status of two members will not solve the problem,” he said.
The KMT on Tuesday revoked the election status of Yang Chi-hsiung (楊吉雄) and Chiang Da-lung (江達隆) for giving gifts to party delegates. The move, however, was confronted by a group of party delegates, who said they received gifts from almost all the candidates.
“Candidates for the Central Committee and CSC elections send all kinds of gifts — from moon cakes to handbags. We were also invited to endless banquets during the election campaigns. It’s an open secret,” a delegate said on condition of anonymity.
The competition for CSC seats remained intense even though the function of the committee was weakened after Ma set up of the Zhongshan meeting in 2005 as a preparatory meeting with top KMT officials. This left the committee with little power and turned it into a rubber-stamp mechanism.
Election bribery was especially serious in this year’s CSC election, as the importance of the committee is expected to increase after Ma took over the chairmanship this month.
KMT Legislator Ho Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳), who did not offer her resignation until yesterday, said a by-election alone would not change the bribery culture.
“If it is determined to reform, the KMT Evaluation and Disciplinary Committee should continue the investigation,” she said.
Sean Lien said the party should scrap the district voting system and start a single election with all voting booths centralized.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods