Members of the Housing Movement yesterday demonstrated outside the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) headquarters in Taipei, calling on DPP Legislator Hsueh Ling (薛凌) to resign as convener of the legislature’s Finance Committee as they accused her of boycotting housing reforms because she benefits from soaring real-estate prices.
“We are here to call on the DPP to prove that it is different from the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] by asking Hsueh to resign as convener of the Finance Committee,” Housing Movement spokesperson Peng Yang-kai (彭揚凱) said. “Do not use autonomy of the caucus as an excuse. Hsueh is a legislator at-large, therefore the party has the right to recall her if she goes against its policy direction. We are only asking that she resign as committee convener, not as legislator.”
Hsueh was elected as one of the conveners of the Finance Committee on Friday last week, when the new legislative session started. She owns 95 real-estate properties and was involved in 97 property transactions in last year alone, according to her property declaration published by the Control Yuan.
“Although Hsueh ranked only second in the number of properties she owns among lawmakers, she was involved in more property transactions than any of her colleagues,” Peng said. “She is apparently a contributor and beneficiary of housing price inflation, which is clearly in violation of the DPP’s policy goal to combat inflation.”
Another group member, Huang Yi-chung (黃益中), alleged that Hsueh was also involved in insider trading and overlending.
Hsueh has spoken against policies to combat soaring real-estate prices, warning that reform would have a negative impact on economic growth, Huang said.
“Anyone who makes such a statement is either ignorant, idiotic or a cunning person, because the real-estate business does not help boost GDP, rather, it drags it down,” Huang said.
Accepting the petition from the demonstrators, the DPP’s Department of Social Movement Deputy Director Chen Tzu-yu (陳子瑜) said the party fully agrees with the objectives of the Housing Movement in principle and promised to help arrange a meeting where the activists and DPP top officials could discuss the issue in detail.
Hsueh said in a written statement she would respect their call, but she would fulfill her responsibility as committee convener, as she was elected by the entire committee.
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