Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday rebutted a media report that her father had illegally obtained a plot of land in Taipei that originally belonged to the military.
“My father was a car mechanic at the time, so he would not have been able to exercise any influence on the US military assistance advisory group or the armed forces. That would have been impossible,” Tsai said when asked about a report published by the Chinese-language China Times Weekly magazine. “Anyone with common sense would know that under an authoritarian regime, someone working as a mechanic would not have such influence. It is a made-up story.”
The magazine report claimed the plot of land on Zhongshan N Road where seafood restaurant Hai Pa Wang (海霸王) is located used to belong to the military, alleging Tsai Ing-wen’s father, Tsai Chieh-sheng (蔡潔生), used his influence to purchase the land.
Tsai Ing-wen said the land was not military property, but had originally been designated for the construction of a park and in 1965 was rezoned for “construction.”
She said that such false accusations had been made in the run-up to the presidential election in 2012, adding they were “not good for the election and for our democracy.”
In a separate setting, DPP spokesperson Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) cited official property registration documents, saying the land had been private property since 1946 and, prior to 1969 when the title was transferred to a company founded by Tsai Ing-wen’s brother Tsai Nan-ying (蔡南瀛), there had been several transfers of ownership among private owners.
“According to all official records that we could obtain, since 1946 the land has never been government property, and all title transfers and construction on the plot has been legal,” Huang said. “We regret that the China Times Weekly published a false story based only on the oral accounts of ‘elders’ over what they thought had occurred 50 years ago, disregarding journalistic professionalism.”
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