The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said it can no longer pay the 18 percent preferential savings interest rate on retired party workers’ pensions. It also said that from this month it had to postpone the payment of party workers’ salaries indefinitely. Could it be that the KMT, which once boasted that it was the wealthiest political party in the world, is facing bankruptcy?
The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee has been ratcheting up the pressure on the KMT. Reports say that the KMT has been offloading its assets by, for example, selling properties in Tokyo and putting others in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和) and Taipei’s Ximending (西門町) area on the market. It is also reportedly trying to pay five months’ worth of salaries in advance and has ordered 100,000 party ID cards with prepaid EasyCard functionality to spend the remaining NT$1 billion (US$31.8 million).
To stop the KMT divesting itself of its ill-gotten assets, the committee asked Bank SinoPac and the Bank of Taiwan to freeze the party’s accounts, to prevent the KMT offloading its real-estate assets and withdrawing its liquid assets.
Committee Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said that the strict measures should encourage the party to transform itself into a democratic political entity.
Successive KMT chairmen have tried to deal with the ill-gotten assets, but none has followed through on these promises, so the hope was that the committee’s hardball approach would prompt the KMT to clear up the assets issue and the preferential interest rate on pensions.
The KMT is beset on all sides. The screws are being tightened, with pressure coming from society and regulations, with 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) being promulgated, while the committee is squeezing the KMT financially in an unprecedented way.
Still, the KMT leadership seems reluctant to back down and is using its workers as human shields, exploiting a sense of crisis over their salaries to protest against the committee and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). It is trying to turn the situation to its advantage, accusing the banks and the committee of conspiring to settle political accounts and robbing workers of their salaries.
Dealing with the ill-gotten assets is an important step toward achieving transitional justice, but it has to be handled wisely. The KMT must not be allowed any room for tricks or political manipulation. While the law does give the committee the power to freeze the party’s bank assets, it is supposed to be addressing the results of improper behavior: That has nothing to do with current party workers, and neither should it threaten the KMT’s survival. The party should be allowed to pay workers’ salaries and cover its operational expenditures.
The committee has a legal leg to stand on, but its actions could be seen as cold and risk generating sympathy for the workers, causing people to fall for the KMT’s line that this is all about settling political scores. If the committee is not careful, it could inadvertently be handing the KMT a political stick with which to beat it.
The committee should talk to the KMT and set a ceiling on expenditure based on the party’s personnel and operational needs, so that it can continue to function properly without giving rise to suspicions that it is trying to move assets.
It is not a perfect solution and lets the KMT off the hook, but at least it would lead to less collateral damage.
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