Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday blasted the Executive Yuan’s draft legislation on a political party act, saying it would allow for the “de facto legalization” of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) assets.
The Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee yesterday held its first review of the act this legislative session.
“The ultimate result [of the Executive Yuan version] would be to effectively legalize whatever assets are not deemed illegal or transferred away,” DPP Legislator Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) said, citing provisions allowing parties to move assets into a trust before prohibitions against owning property or investing come into effect.
“Even if assets are not illicit, parties should still be required to transfer them to avoid profit-making,” Chao said. “The requirement should be to clear the accounts so there is no possibility of continuing to earn money and parties should be fined until they transfer everything away.”
DPP Legislator Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said the Executive Yuan’s version failed to include provisions for stripping parties of “illicit” assets, and questioned Deputy Minister of the Interior Jonathan Chen’s (陳純敬) statement that the problem of “illicit” assets should be resolved via lawsuits and cross-party political negotiations.
“What you really mean is that we should give up [on getting back] anything transferred more than 15 years ago — that those things should just be ceded to the KMT,” Chao said, adding that statutes of limitations doomed most lawsuits aimed at KMT assets that were acquired illicitly during its authoritarian rule prior to democratization.
A proposed political party act, which would forbid parties from owning property beyond their own office space and also forbid them from making investments, has been closely linked throughout its extended legislative history with efforts to strip the KMT of its business and property assets, with the KMT alleging that the act is a balanced alternative to “illicit asset” legislation that explicitly targets the party.
Different versions of the legislation have bounced around the legislature since early in the presidential term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Chen yesterday said that the ministry believes illicit assets should be left out of the act because they represent a “one-time” issue, which should be dealt with separately from the act’s long-term regulatory concerns.
Seven versions of the legislation are currently under review.
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