The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday hit back at Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) recent remark accusing former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) presidency of “burdening” the nation’s political culture with corruption and gangsters, saying that its real source was the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) stolen assets.
The KMT’s massive ill-gotten assets are the most serious malignant tumor on Taiwan’s democratic development, DPP spokesperson Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said.
Chen said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has several times broken his promises to rid the party of the assets the KMT stole during the Martial Law era.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Chen said Ma first made the pledge when he assumed the KMT chairmanship in 2005, adding that Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), who succeeded Ma as the party’s chairman in 2007, also made similar promises, but nothing was done.
Chen said the KMT sold the building housing the Policy Research and Development Department and three media assets — China Television Co, Broadcasting Corporation of China and the Central Motion Picture Co — in 2005 and its former headquarters, properties worth more than NT$25 billion (US$869.5 million).
He said the KMT used the money from selling those properties to support KMT candidates in various elections. Chen added that based on his understanding, KMT Legislator Lee Fu-hsing (李復興) received NT$8.1 million from the party when he ran for his seat in Kaohsiung four years ago. If most KMT legislative candidates received funds from the party headquarters as Lee did, the party would have spent more than NT$500 million in the legislative elections, Chen said.
“Can the party really say that money is unrelated to its assets?” Chen asked.
He added that former KMT legislators Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井), Chiang Lien-fu (江連福), Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) and Lee E-tin (李乙廷) had their elections annulled by courts for vote buying charges.
“Where was that money from [for vote-buying]?” Chen asked.
Saying there were also cases of KMT politicians probed for ties with gangsters, Chen said that these incidents suggested the KMT is rife with corruption and gangsterism.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS