A legislative committee yesterday approved this year’s budget request by the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), despite a threat by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to freeze the spending plan because of the absence of SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) at the meeting.
The Internal Administration Committee got off to a bad start in the morning after DPP legislators requested the presence of Chiang, 228 Memorial Foundation chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) and Mongolian and Tibetan Foundation chairman Chen Shih-wu (陳式武), who were also no-shows.
DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) said the legislature had resolved on Dec. 15 that starting this year, foundation chairpersons entrusted by the government to exercise public rights must attend committee meetings whenever the their budget requests are reviewed.
“I propose we take a break until Chiang shows up,” Chen Ming-wen said.
However, that proposal was met with strong opposition from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, who accused the DPP of misunderstanding the resolution reached on Dec. 15.
KMT Legislator Chang Ching-chung (張慶忠) said that when he first proposed the motion on Nov. 25 while chairing the Internal Administration Committee, it was targeted at the foundation heads present at that time and did not include the SEF chairman.
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) called on DPP legislators to be “pragmatic” when it comes to implementing the resolution, because the situations were different.
“Chiang may be the nation’s top negotiator on cross-Taiwan Strait affairs, but he doesn’t know much about the tiny details of the foundation’s operations,” Wu said.
Following this, DPP and KMT legislators engaged in a war of words for about an hour and a half.
Attempting to break the -deadlock, KMT Legislator Kung Wen-chi (孔文吉), who chairs the committee, twice called for a recess.
While Kung originally ruled that the committee would postpone the budget review for the SEF, he was pressured by his KMT colleagues to vote on the DPP’s request that Chiang and Chan be present, as well as a request that the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and the Ministry of the Interior assess their qualifications for the job.
The KMT-controlled committee voted six to three against the DPP’s motion.
The committee also struck down three other motions filed by the DPP, including one proposing to freeze the SEF budget request on the grounds that Chiang was absent.
The SEF has projected -revenues of NT$333 million (US$11.44 million) for this year and expenditures of the same amount. After hours of haggling, the committee slashed the projected expenses by NT$500,000.
Meanwhile, at the same venue, KMT legislators said that the planned daily quota for the number of individual Chinese tourists allowed into the country was “far too low.”
Calling the quota “a joke,” KMT Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said the MAC should be “more courageous” by allowing more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan.
A council official said on condition of anonymity over the weekend that Taiwan was expected to lift its decades-old ban on visits by individual Chinese tourists starting in April, with a cap set at 500 residents from Shanghai and Beijing each day on a trial basis.
Solo Chinese tourists would be allowed to stay in Taiwan for up to 15 days, the official said.
MAC Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said Taipei and Beijing were still negotiating the details and that at no point had the council proposed any concrete numbers.
SEF Vice Chairman Kao Koong-lian (高孔廉) said that when establishing the quota, the capacity of local hotels and transportation infrastructure must be taken into account.
Kung said he hoped the policy would come into force around the Lunar New Year holiday.
Liu said while both sides had agreed to implement the measure in the first half of this year, they had yet to decide on a specific date.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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