Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers yesterday threatened to axe the the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee’s budget at a legislative review next month amid controversy regarding KMT funds.
The committee on Monday issued two administrative injunctions to freeze a KMT bank account while ordering Bank SinoPac and Bank of Taiwan to hold the party’s checks after the Taipei High Administrative Court last week lifted a freeze imposed on the account by the committee.
KMT Legislator Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said that the committee’s actions were targeting the KMT.
The committee has made its regulations and it alone holds the right to interpret the rules, which the public considers inappropriate and detrimental to the KMT’s interests, Wang said, questioning the validity of the committee and its actions.
“The committee is supposed to act according to the law, good reason and sympathy, but that is not the case at all,” Wang said.
“As it has been feared, [the committee] acts as prosecutor and judge, among other roles, so obviously it is inappropriate,” he said.
KMT caucus whip Sufin Siluko (廖國棟) said that legal professionals saw the committee’s “relentless actions” as damaging the judiciary, especially committee chairman Wellington Koo’s (顧立雄) appeal of the ruling and renewal of the freeze order.
KMT lawmakers are to be briefed by KMT Vice Chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) today on the KMT’s planned countermeasures of the committee’s “unlawful actions,” and they are to battle the issue at legislative reviews, Sufin said.
KMT Legislator Chen Chao-ming (陳超明), co-convener of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, said it would schedule a review of the assets committee’s budget next month — the latter stage of this legislative session — to avoid increasing hostilities between KMT and Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers, or compromising reviews of budget for other entities.
Koo will be asked to report to the legislature and the KMT will evaluate the assets committee’s budget plan, Chen said, adding that the KMT would not boycott the budget’s passage, although it would be necessary to reduce it.
“The budget review is of great importance to the KMT,” Chen said. “The party cannot only criticize the [assets] committee, but has to identify where the law [that authorizes it] is unconstitutional.”
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