Discontent in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) with KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) yesterday boiled to the surface, with former minister of transportation and communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) saying that Hung wants to send “the KMT to the mortuary.”
Yeh, who was an adviser to Hung’s presidential campaign in 2015 before Hung’s forced replacement by then-KMT chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), said on Facebook that Hung allowed the KMT’s Huang Fu-hsing military veterans’ branch to sway the party’s chairperson election.
“According to party member numbers published by the KMT, out of 880,000 registered members, only about 220,000 have voting rights in the chairperson election, of which 197,000 are either older than 65 and have been party members for at least 40 years — including 170,000 Huang Fu-hsing members — or are members of low-income households,” Yeh said. “Both groups are exempt from paying party fees to have voting rights.”
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“In other words, the KMT chairperson election will be completely decided by Huang Fu-hsing,” he added, asking why there have been “less than 30,000 members willing to pay party fees” during Hung’s tenure as chairwoman.
“Are you really taking the KMT to the mortuary?” Yeh asked Hung.
It was not the first time Yeh has taken Hung to task for what he said was the impending demise of the party.
On Dec. 22, he said on Facebook that the KMT “is being pushed from the intensive care unit to hospice care and will be sent to the mortuary in no time,” sharing an article from the Chinese-language United Daily News that said the party was “narrowing its road, with an intraparty consensus nowhere to be seen.”
The following day, he added: “Chairwoman Hung, please do not complain about other people not listening to your orders. Please think about why they fail to do so.”
KMT Central Policy Committee director Alex Tsai (蔡正元) fought back yesterday, saying on Facebook: “No wonder [former president] Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) poll numbers were in the mortuary; it was because he made someone like Yeh the minister of transportation and communications.”
“Yeh relied on the KMT to indulge on luxuries, but he did not even pay a NT$2,000 special party fee,” Tsai said, referring to a donation scheme employed by the party to raise funds.
There are only 65,967 Huang Fu-hsing members, of which 60,480 are older than 65 and have been party members for at least 40 years, he said.
“Can Yeh not read numbers? Was his IQ [intelligence quotient] sent to the mortuary?” Tsai said. “No wonder he was seriously slapped on the face when he undertook financial reforms of Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp.”
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