Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus convener Lin Te-fu (林德福) yesterday denied reports that he had disobeyed KMT chairman-elect Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) instruction to block the passage of the Special Act on the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program (前瞻基礎建設特別條例).
Lin made the remark during a radio interview where he was asked to verify an allegation by KMT Legislator Hsu Yu-jen (許毓仁) that he disregarded Wu’s directive.
Lin said Wu had never given any instructions regarding the bill, adding that Wu had told him that he respected the collective wisdom of the KMT caucus.
Wu was campaigning for the KMT chairperson election in April when the bill was in the legislature for a committee review, he said.
It was about the same time that the KMT caucus reached the decision to cut the program’s budget by half, he said, adding that the decision had never been changed.
Lin also rejected media reports that former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) had influenced the KMT caucus’ decisionmaking.
Asked whether the KMT caucus chose to hold negotiations with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus because it endorsed the program, Lin said the KMT is against the rail construction projects outlined in the plan.
The DPP included funds already earmarked for the half-finished New Taipei City’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Sanying line, and the Ankeng and Tamsui light rails to the budget for the program, which was a move aimed at fudging the numbers, he said.
In related news, the KMT caucus panned the National Development Council’s proposed budget for the Forward-looking program and threatened to boycott Premier Lin Chuan’s (林全) report on the program at the legislature next week.
The council yesterday published budget plans for projects under the program, which showed it plans to allocate NT$17 billion as a first-stage budget for rail construction projects — the same amount it had budgeted before the program’s budget was cut from NT$882.49 billion (US$28.83 billion) to NT$420 billion.
The DPP administration is “fooling and belittling the legislature” by allotting the same amount of funds after the program’s budget was halved, KMT secretary-general Lin Wei-chou (林維洲) said.
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