Thu, Jul 20, 2000 page4

• General Tang censured for his budget comment

  MILITARY SPAT Tang's criticism of the former defense minister, Premier Tang Fei, broke the rules, but it is unlikely that the general will be condemned by the defense committee as his remark was not regarded as malicious

  • By Brian Hsu / STAFF REPORTER
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  Lawmakers yesterday confirmed that Chief of the General Staff General Tang Yao-ming (湯曜明) may have violated the military code by criticizing his former superior officer Tang Fei (唐飛), who is now the premier.

  Lawmakers said the comment was not malicious, however, after members of the Legislative Yuan's Defense Committee met with General Tang on Tuesday. At issue was whether General Tang had complained about his former superior Premier Tang's failure to increase the defense budget as he had promised when serving as defense minister.

  "General Tang admitted to having complained [about the budget cut], but not in the way it was reported in the press. He said he was just too worried about how to push forward future arms projects with insufficient defense allocations," said Lawmaker Li Ching-hsiung (李慶雄) of the Taiwan Independence Party. Li is a member of the legislature's Defense Committee.

  "General Tang told us that after knowing the defense budget for the next fiscal year was to be cut from the proposed NT$320 billion to NT$250 billion, he did everything in his power to try to reverse the situation. He even sought help from the directorate-general of budget, accounting, and statistics of the Executive Yuan. But all his efforts were in vain," Li said.

  General Tang then called a meeting of around 100 staff generals to explain the budget cut.

  "At the meeting, General Tang told the generals that the former defense minister and now Premier Tang forgot to carry out the promise to increase the defense budget he had made during the final phase of his term as defense minister," Li said.

  "General Tang mentioned Premier Tang by name, rather than referring to him as 'that person' as reported by the press, in his complaint about the budget cut," he said.

  "We found that he did not make the complaint on purpose. He did not mean for it to be heard by the public. It was leaked to the outside by some generals attending the meeting."

  New Party Lawmaker Chang Shih-liang (張世良) accompanied Li on his visit with General Tang yesterday. The two lawmakers visited General Tang with the purpose of determining the veracity of his reported criticism of the premier regarding the budget cut. The lawmakers wanted to make sure the incident had occurred before they proposed a group condemnation of General Tang by the defense committee.

  After meeting with General Tang, lawmaker Chang thought it would be better to shelve a group condemnation motion on grounds that General Tang's comment was not malicious, Li said.

  Though sympathetic toward General Tang, Li said he still felt compelled to criticize General Tang for not obeying the moral principles of the military to never reprove superior officers.

  "General Tang's criticism of the premier amounts to a humiliation of his former superior. It was an unwise move which should be condemned," Li said.

  Li was not the only member of the legislature's defense committee to openly condemn General Tang for the incident. KMT Lawmaker Chou Cheng-chih (周正之), a retired lieutenant-general, also lambasted General Tang in an interview with the Taipei Times several days ago.

  In response to the mounting criticism against him over the matter, General Tang said in a private meeting with several top-ranking generals on Tuesday that he was "just following his conscience," sources told the Taipei Times.
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