The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has been trying to obtain the People First Party’s (PFP) support to jointly file a request in the legislature for a constitutional interpretation on the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例) passed on Monday, KMT Vice Chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) said yesterday.
As it requires at least one-third, or 38, of all 113 legislators to file a request for a constitutional interpretation and the KMT caucus has only 35 seats, the KMT would need to form an alliance with lawmakers from other parties to reach the threshold.
In a radio interview, Chan said the KMT has been in communication with the PFP via various channels, with some saying that there is “room for consideration,” but adding that it is “not yet the last moment.”
When asked whether the KMT was directly in touch with PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), Chan said that he could not offer a clear answer, as he did not have the details of how contact was established.
Chan said the KMT has also “indirectly” approached Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers.
Chan denied media speculation that he has a different stance from KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) on how the party’s assets should be handled.
“It is just that Hung, as chairwoman, has more to take into consideration,” he said, adding that he also considers the act to be unconstitutional and contravening existing laws, calling it bad for democracy.
Chan said the party would be restructured, receiving more help from volunteers and donating the rest of its assets after calculating and reserving a portion to cover the interests of retired party workers.
With the passage of the act and the establishment of an Executive Yuan committee to handle ill-gotten party assets, Chan said the KMT would recommend representatives to the committee if asked to do so by the government.
Chan said that he does not know and has never asked how many assets the KMT possesses.
“The point is whether they are hidden away,” he added.
To his knowledge, the KMT Administration and Management Committee has a “crystal-clear” record of the party’s assets, he said, adding that the Cabinet and the Control Yuan had conducted related investigations during the terms of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and that members of the public can also tip the government off about what they suspect to be “hidden” KMT assets.
In regards to the party’s readiness to donate assets, Chan said the KMT’s stance is that it would “rather go bankrupt than continue to be accused of possessing ill-gotten assets.”
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
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
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. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS