An internal struggle within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has surfaced, as indicated by the revelations that party headquarters is at odds over whether to reach a deal with the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee and that the KMT caucus had no idea that the headquarters was planning to negotiate with the committee, let alone the internecine squabble the headquarters had over whether to sign an administrative contract with the committee.
Some local media outlets, and the KMT, described the Taipei High Administrative Court’s ruling on Friday last week that suspended the transfer of stock held by the party in Central Investment Co (中央投資) and its subsidiary Hsinyutai (欣裕台) as a “victory” for the KMT.
However, as the committee last week stated — and Koo yesterday reiterated — the court, in the very same ruling actually ruled against the KMT’s petition to overturn the committee’s finding that the two companies are among the KMT’s ill-gotten assets.
The key to the intraparty — absent the caucus, apparently — debate reportedly lay in the concern that the signing of a contract with the committee would put the KMT in a bad light and imply that the party fully agrees with the committee that the assets concerned are ill-gotten.
While some called for the contract to be signed and the dispute to be settled once and for all, citing the fact that the party itself has upheld the promise to “return [ill-gotten] party assets to zero” during its last national congress, some are still struggling to promote the idea that the KMT has the historical right to retain those assets the source of which has been regarded as obscure.
It is probably important for those intending to run for the KMT chairmanship next year not to back down over the party’s legitimacy in its past authoritarian rule, which KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), has repeatedly insisted is partly conducive to Taiwan’s prosperity and stability — overlooking the fact that it should not be conflated with the question of whether the KMT has been holding assets that it should not. There are certainly other aspiring contenders for leadership who could not stand in a position that is as affirmative and positive of the party’s past.
However, keeping the KMT caucus out of the debate is truly puzzling. There are two reasons why one would expect KMT lawmakers to have participated in the discussion. The first is for the appearance of solidarity, as the lawmakers’ admittance that they had no prior knowledge has only further exposed the KMT’s internal chaos and rifts. The other is for the responsibility of reaching an agreement with the committee to also be shouldered by the caucus, which would have spread the political risk.
Leaving out the caucus means dismissing the only group in the KMT that actually has popular support, a baffling move that has been criticized many times by the KMT caucus convener whenever there seemed to be a gap — if not breakdown — in headquarters-caucus communication on crucial issues.
It is anyone’s guess why the caucus was not consulted. It might be that the rift is so deep that the headquarters had little stomach for making the ugly feud public, or it could be that KMT lawmakers would have views that would better correspond with how the public views the KMT’s party assets.
A poll showed that more than 60 percent of the public believe that the passage of the law governing ill-gotten party assets is good for the nation’s democratic development. Even the KMT’s own recent poll showed that more than 50 percent of the public agree that the two companies should be handed over to the state via due judicial processes.
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