Former minister of transportation and communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時), who served as an adviser to Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) presidential campaign team, yesterday said allegations that he was involved in a quid pro quo exchange between the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) headquarters and Hung was “stupid.”
Yeh on Thursday said that KMT headquarters offered to give Hung NT$30 million (US$922,708) for her campaign on Oct. 5, a disclosure that led Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) to accuse Yeh and the KMT of agreeing to a quid pro quo arrangement for Hung to step down as the party’s presidential candidate.
All previous KMT presidential candidates received their funding from party headquarters, “so there should be no problem at all for the party to fund [its candidates],” Yeh said in rejection of the accusation.
“Hung had said [at the beginning of her campaign] that she would not need the party’s money, so [when the campaign found itself running short of funds] we said we would ‘borrow’ and then pay back the funds with public subsidies for candidates after the election,” Yeh added.
Yeh said that Chen’s accusation was a “stupid comment.”
“Had it been a quid pro quo arrangement, it would have taken place differently,” he added.
When asked whether Hung knew about him asking KMT headquarters for funds, Yeh said: “Yes, I think she knew.”
The former minister said that the decision was reached through discussion and coordination among Hung, KMT Secretary-General Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) and himself.
However, the Chinese-language Apple Daily cited “a friend of Hung” as saying that Hung never asked Yeh to borrow money from the party.
“According to the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), a subsidy for a candidate is to be received by the party that nominated the candidate. One of Hung’s aides had asked [after Hung said she would not use the KMT’s funds] whether the party would help cover her campaign expenses, as the KMT would receive millions from the subsidy after the elections, but the party did not respond positively to the proposal, even after Hung was nominated on July 19 by the party congress,” the friend was quoted as saying.
“It is strange that Yeh would ask Lee for NT$30 million on Oct. 5, since party headquarters had always been reluctant to provide funding, and on Oct. 3 Chu tried to talk Hung out of her run, followed by the KMT Central Standing Committee proposing an extempore party congress on Oct. 4,” the report quoted the friend as saying.
According to the report, the friend said that Hung was unaware of Yeh’s actions, and later demanded that Yeh return the check after she was offered the funds.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS