The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday called on New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), the sole candidate for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairmanship, to launch a probe into President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) financial connections with corporations if he is elected party chairman next month.
“Chu has promised to push for reforms — reforms within the party and reforms of the constitution — if he is elected KMT chairman,” DPP spokesperson Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) said.
“He is therefore obliged to launch a probe into Ma’s complex financial affairs to show that he is sincere about pushing reforms,” he said.
Huang said that while the KMT and Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團) had denied allegations by political commentators that the party and Ma had received political donations from the company, the Chinese-language Next Magazine cited a transcript of prosecutors questioning Wei Ying-chiao (魏應交), one of Ting Hsin’s top managers, in a report, saying that Wei had admitted to donating NT$5.25 million (US$166,000) to the KMT in 2010 for its Greater Kaohsiung mayoral campaign.
Huang added that despite the KMT’s denial, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) had acknowledged such a donation and that the KMT’s Kaohsiung headquarters had also said it had given Ting Hsin a receipt for the donation.
Ting Hsin has recently been the target of public criticism and boycott because of a series of food scandals.
Many opposition politicians and political commentators have alleged that the group has been able to survive multiple scandals because it is a major financial sponsor of the KMT and the president.
“If, as Wang and the KMT’s Kaohsiung headquarters said, the money was given to the KMT as a political donation, where is it now?” Huang asked. “On the other hand, if what the KMT and Ting Hsin said are true, does Chu think that Wang is lying?”
“If Ting Hsin did not make the donation, but Wei said so during questioning by prosecutors, he would have been giving false testimony, which is punishable by imprisonment of up to seven years,” he added.
Huang said that if Chu is to lead reforms within the party and bring about clean politics, he will inevitably have to touch on the issue of “money politics” in the party because “it is at the core of clean politics.”
Huang also urged Chu to respond positively to amending the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法), as well as other sunshine bills and legislation dealing with the KMT’s “ill-gotten” party assets, which the party took directly from the Japanese after Japan’s surrender of Taiwan in 1945.
Those former Japanese properties should have been taken over by the government, he said.
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