Former National Women’s League (NWL) chairwoman Cecilia Koo (辜嚴倬雲) yesterday filed a request with a court to halt the execution of the Ministry of the Interior’s order to remove her and former league deputy chairwoman Yeh Chin-fong (葉金鳳) from office over their failure to sign an administrative contract.
Koo said in a statement that legal action has been taken to restore the truth and to protect herself from further defamation, calling Friday’s order by the ministry — which oversees civil associations — “illegal.”
“Since July, the ministry and the Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee have been feeding information to the press, alleging that their negotiations with the league did not go well and that if the league did not sign the contract, they would strip me of my chairwomanship and freeze the league’s assets,” Koo said in the statement.
Regardless of the reasons the ministry has given to justify its order, the real purpose was to force her out to strong-arm the league into signing the contract, Koo said.
“How could it be legal if the ministry’s order has nothing to do with its true intentions?” she said.
Koo’s action came only one day after the committee postponed deliberation on the league and its alleged connection with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), giving its new chairwoman, Joanna Lei (雷倩), who was elected on Sunday, time for internal discussions.
The contract sought to finalize an agreement reached by the three parties on July 24 that would have seen the league undergo a drastic structural reform, including donating more than 80 percent of its assets, or NT$31.2 billion (US$1.04 billion), to the government for charitable purposes; merging with its subsidiary, the Social Welfare Foundation; and opening itself up for government-led public supervision.
Koo said she has repeatedly explained to the ministry that the Military Benefit Tax, a tariff levied on the US dollar value of all imported goods from 1955 to 1989 that provided most of the league’s funding, was actually a form of donation initiated by the private sector.
“It is gravely insulting that the ministry ... accused Koo or the league of appropriating others’ assets and purposely withholding information about how the league had used the ‘donation,’” Koo said, calling the accusations trumped-up charges.
When asked for comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee yesterday, Minister of the Interior Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) did not respond directly to Koo’s remarks.
He expressed the hope that the ministry’s discussions with Lei will continue and that the league will meet public expectations by democratizing its organization, returning its assets to state coffers and subjecting itself to public supervision.
Additional reporting by Cheng Hung-ta
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