President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that the public can judge for themselves whether the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) had squandered the entire legislative session by not reviewing the general budget and passing only bills benefiting certain people or organizations.
Lai made the remarks before inspecting the Taipei Beimen Post Office ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, when he was asked about the two opposition parties repeatedly blocking bids to review the Executive Yuan’s general budget and special budget plans.
hold a majority in the legislature, yet they neither reviewed the general budget plan nor the special defense budget plan this past legislative session. Instead, they did the best they could to pass bills that would spare KMT Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恆) from serving jail time, allow CTi News to return to the cable TV system and enable the KMT to reclaim assets that it acquired through unjust means,” Lai said. “People can judge if this is reasonable.”
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Asked whether the Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan would not sign or countersign the controversial bills — as the Executive Yuan did with the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) last year — the president said the Cabinet has publicly stated that it would consult experts to handle this matter in a legal and constitutional manner.
“As president, I have no criticisms against Legislative Yuan Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜). I am only pleading with him to consider the long-term development of national security, the economy and public welfare, and facilitate the passage of the proposed general budget and special defense budget. This is the responsibility of legislators and the legislative speaker,” he said.
Yen was convicted of corruption for embezzling assistants’ salaries and was sentenced by the High Court to seven years and 10 months in prison. The sentence can be appealed.
TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said it is unfair to the public when the president of a country takes the lead in spreading false information.
Past amendments pushed by the Democratic Progressive Party — such as the decriminalization of the discretionary state affairs fund — are what constitute “tailor-made legislation for specific people,” he said.
KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said the Cabinet chose not to allocate a budget to raise the wages of the military, police and firefighters while at the same time urging the legislature to “rush the review and passage” of its budget proposals.
He likened the situation to a restaurant serving undercooked food and then blaming customers for eating too slowly.
Such a disreputable business should be rejected by all consumers, he said.
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