Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday accused their Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) counterparts of calling off a meeting that could have addressed the problem of public servants holding permanent foreign residency.
The caucus whips of the two parties were scheduled to negotiate an amendment to the Act Governing the Recompense for the Discharge of Special Political Appointees (政務人員退職撫卹條例), the special political appointee draft act (政務人員法草案) and regulations governing salaries for special political appointees draft bill (政務人員俸給條例) at a meeting to be presided over by Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
CANCELED
However, the meeting was abruptly cancelled and none of the items on the agenda were discussed.
The cancellation came after the DPP proposed to include in the three acts provisions for the disqualification of public servants who possess permanent residency in other countries.
The DPP’s move came in the wake of a controversy surrounding President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) choice of Chen Be-yue (陳碧玉) — who held a US green card for 18 months while serving on the Supreme Court — as a Council of Grand Justices nominee.
On March 9, 2009, an amendment to the Nationality Act (國籍法) passed a preliminary review with regulations prohibiting public servants from holding permanent residency abroad.
STALLED
However, the act has been stalled by the KMT in the legislature ever since.
DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) told a press conference that since Ma had failed to clear suspicions, first raised during the presidential campaign in 2008, that he still held a valid US green card, the KMT caucus feared that enactment of the acts could be detrimental to Ma’s re-election campaign.
This would explain the KMT’s boycott of both acts and the cancellation of the negotiations, Gao said.
In response, a KMT official said he was unaware of the meeting’s cancellation.
INCLUSION
“We [the KMT caucus] did not ask for a cancellation of the negotiation meeting. I was informed today that the meeting was called off,” KMT caucus whip Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said.
Hsieh said he supported the inclusion of the prohibition in the amendment and the two drafts concerning political appointees and denied that the KMT had blocked the amendment to the Nationality Act.
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