The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has disinvited Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) from its 19th national congress later this month, sources within the party said yesterday.
The congress will be held at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall on Sept. 29, during which KMT members will tackle issues of party policy, as well as attend the swearing in of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as KMT chairman.
The sources said the party leadership had decided that Wang, who would have attended the congress as chairman of the party’s Central Evaluation and Discipline Committee, would not be present due to the recent controversy over his alleged undue lobbying.
Wang stands accused by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigations Division (SID) of attempting to take legal pressure off Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) by lobbying High Prosecutors’ Office prosecutor Lin Shiow-tao (林秀濤) to not appeal Ker’s not-guilty verdict in a breach of trust case.
The SID says that Wang allegedly enlisted the help of former minister of justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) and High Prosecutors’ Office Head Prosecutor Chen Shou-huang (陳守煌) to carry out the illegal lobbying.
The case led the KMT to revoke the legislative speaker’s membership, which in turn caused him to petition the Taiwan High Court to retain his privileges as a party member.
The court approved Wang’s appeal on Friday after stipulating that he pay NT$9.38 million (US$314,300) as a guarantee to the party, but it denied his request to obtain a restraining order to stop the Legislative Yuan from revoking his status as a legislator.
Wang dropped the latter petition on Saturday.
Although the court ruled that the legislative speaker would, for the moment, retain his party membership, the KMT’s Central Standing Committee’s still determined that Wang should not go to the congress, the sources said.
The Central Standing Committee’s view was that the court’s decision did not make Wang a party representative, nor did it mean that he would continue to be the chairman of the disciplinary committee, they added.
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