Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that immediate action should be taken to deal with the scandal over rampant bribery during the recent Central Standing Committee (CSC) election.
“Speculation about election bribery has clouded the party’s reputation and we need to address this issue immediately and change the situation,” Ma said as he campaigned for the party’s nominee in the Kinmen County Commissioner election, Lee Wuo-shih (李沃士), on Kinmen yesterday morning.
It was Ma’s first public response to the bribery allegations and to a wave of resignations from CSC members who said they were stepping down to force the party to hold a new election.
However, it is believed that Ma was behind the resignations of almost all the CSC members, as a by-election could only be organized when enough CSC members have resigned to ensure that the committee — the party’s highest decision-making body — no longer has enough members to function.
The KMT has called a CSC by-election for Nov. 14, even though two committee members are refusing to quit their seats: KMT Taipei City Councilor Li Keng Kuei-fang (厲耿桂芳) and Taipei County Council Speaker Chen Hsin-ching (陳幸進).
The rest of the committee had resigned by Saturday amid accusations of widespread vote-buying in the Oct. 11 election.
The party said yesterday that it was considering centralizing all voting booths in Taipei for the by-election to prevent vote buying.
Li Keng and Chen, however, continued to raise doubts yesterday about the legitimacy of the resignations by the other committee members.
“I think a by-election should be called by Chairman Ma. I cherish the election certificate issued by the party and a by-election initiated by CSC members is not legitimate,” Li Keng said.
She said she didn’t feel that was resigning was necessary.
However, she said would cooperate with whatever the final decision is made during the committee’s meeting today.
Chen, on the other hand, insisted on his innocence and said that pressuring all the CSC members to resign was an insult to members who were not involved in vote buying.
“It is not legitimate for the party and society to pressure the elected members to resign. I will respect the party’s final decision, but I will not offer my resignation,” he said.
Ma will finalize the date for the new election and the voting system during tonight’s provisional CSC meeting.
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