Ma must be held accountable for his involvement in selling national assets to fund his presidential campaign instead of returning it to the country.
And Taiwanese need international supports from church groups and NGOs to put pressure on their politicians because the Chinese Nationalist (i.e. the KMT regime) was brought in by the Allied Forces after WWII in 1945 to accept Japanese surrender on behalf of the Allied Forces, but the KMT's temporary administrative role in post -war Formosa has been prolonged indefinitely due to the KMT losing the Chinese Civil War in China in 1949 and became an exiled government taking refuge in Taiwan.
According to a KMT report regarding its assets issued on August 23, 2006, when the KMT was officially registered as an association in 1994, the net worth of its assets was 38.5 billion NT dollars. When the post of KMT Chairman was transferred from Lee Teng-hui to Lien Chan in March 2000, the net worth had increased to 80.8 billion NT dollars. By the time Ma Ying-jeou assumed the chairmanship in August 2005, the value had dropped to 31.1 billion NT dollars. According to the latest report which was issued on July 15th this year (Note: meaning 2007), this figure fell to 25.457 billion NT dollars. In a short 7 years, the KMT’s net worth went from 80.8 billion to 25.4 billion NT dollars. What happened to the remaining 55.4 billion? Where has the money gone? Whose pocket has it gone into? (Source: Taiwan Think Tank’s Forum on Transitional Justice held in July 2007, President Chen’s welcoming speech to the participants, this was also recorded on the official presidential website here, http://www.president.gov.tw/en/prog/news_release/print.php?id=1105499476) Each Taiwanese citizen could have had the 30,000 TWD distributed from the KMT’s stolen asset, but the ROC’s unreasonable referendum law foiled (ROC must move out since the KMT is not interested in democratic reform!). Citing a media report estimating the value of the KMT's assets at NT$600 billion (US$18.4 billion), the legislators argued that the assets should be returned to the nation and distributed among the public, with each person expected to get a share worth about NT$30,000.
…it was only fair that an exhaustive investigation is launched into the KMT assets.
And the pan-blue dominated legislative committee prevented the transformation of transitional justice, and one among the Taiwanese citizen’s public enemies is…
A pan-blue dominated legislative committee yesterday passed a non-binding resolution ordering public agencies to immediately remove Web links to a government Web site detailing its campaign to retrieve the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) stolen assets
All other agencies established after passage of the resolution must also comply with the decision, said KMT Legislator Joanna Lei (雷倩), who chaired the meeting yesterday.
How did the KMT party become richer and richer? basically, government-party in the same coffer plus monopoly
Tsai Tzung-jen (蔡宗珍), an associate professor of law at Tamkang University, said that the KMT had gotten its first chance to "bleach" the assets in 1992, when the Civil Organizations Law was revised to allow political parties to register themselves as a corporation.
"Thereafter, the KMT obtained the legitimacy to control seven share holding companies and numerous assets," Tsai said.
Before that, the assets were registered under the names of individuals, since there was no legal basis for political parties to own assets.
"We must look into how the ownership of the assets was transferred to the KMT," Tsai said.
Chang Ching-hsi (張清溪), a professor of economics at National Taiwan University, pointed out that while much of the real estate now in KMT hands was handed over by the Japanese colonial government in the 1950's when it returned national assets to the new government, the KMT also took advantage of its political monopoly in the past to skim from government coffers.
Once transferring money from the national coffers became more difficult as the country opened up its practices to more public scrutiny, the KMT has over the past decade actively engaged in running businesses, several of which are monopolies, Chang said.
Chang said the assets should return to where they belong.
He said the involvement of gangsters in the political process and pervasive money politics can all be traced to the existence of KMT-run businesses.
After all, the proposal for the KMT’s assets to be put into a trust was nothing but Lien’s tactics to win votes shortly before the 2000 presidential election. The proposal has never been materialized.
And the above observations were backed by another related news. The world’s richest party-the KMT empire grew from 0.8 million to 10 billion USD in 50 years.
"Despite the KMT's move (blogger note: this move hasn’t been materialized) to place its assets in trust, the measure will merely prevent the cancer cells from spreading rather than wipe out the deadly disease," said Andy Liang (梁永煌), the editor-in-chief of Wealth Monthly magazine (財訊) and one of the editors of the book. Liang and Vicky Tien (田習如), also an editor at Wealth Monthly, co-edited the book.
"By means of an authoritarian regime, the KMT has developed its business empire from US$0.8 million dollars to US$10 billion in the past 50 years," Liang said.
Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟), a former deputy mayor of Taipei who is now an economics professor at National Taiwan University and the co-author of another book on how the KMT's assets have distorted Taiwan's political climate, said that two principles must be followed when placing KMT assets in a trust.
"One is justice. The KMT has to be accountable for the source of its revenues. The other is fairness. The party should return illegal revenues to the public," Chen said.
Instead of returning the stolen assets to the nation or putting it in a trust, the KMT party started to sell off the assets as quickly as possible.
Yeh revealed BCC documents showing the broadcaster made NT$8.8 billion through the sale of a building in Taipei City, NT$50 million through a land sale in Panchiao and NT$1.1 billion through a land sale in Sangchung.
"A decision to sell more land in Chiayi, Hsinchu, Taipei County and Hualien has also been made during the BCC's board meeting at the end of last year," Yeh said.
"The KMT really does not want to return its illegally gained assets. On the one hand it is saying it would return the party assets, but on the other hand it is actually selling the land off cheaply and cheating the public," she said.
Buyers of the KMT assets should also be held accountable.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun yesterday said anyone buying Kuomintang assets would be helping the party launder “stolen money.”
“The KMT twice promised, in 2000 and in 2004 to return their wealth to the people, but they are going the wrong way,” said Yu.
“They are not only boycotting the party asset law, but are also selling off their assets,” Yu added.
Some of the property the KMT wants to sell include two media establishments — the China Television Company, and the Broadcasting Company of China — it owns under its Hua Hsia Investment and Holding firm.
Now the KMT is ordering local land bureaus to wipe out all pertinent information and evidence since they are both the governing party and the majority in the Legislative Yuan, but anyone who has facilitated the destruction of records should also be held accountable.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday slammed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for ordering the nation’s land bureaus to erase notes on real estate belonging to the party.
The DPP yesterday said the documents that the KMT submitted to the Ministry of the Interior requesting that notes attached to the party’s property registrations be removed was aimed at protecting party property and burying evidence that the party did not intend to make good on its promise to return its stolen assets.
The KMT submitted its request on April 3 to the ministry, which then referred the request to city and county governments, asking them to instruct local land management authorities to remove the notes.
DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said the KMT government had ordered the local bureaus to hide the KMT’s properties.
And the KMT can always rely on its loyal judges to win the appeal now that justice is eroding.
TAIWAN'S main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party said on Wednesday it would appeal a ruling ordering it to return land reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the government.
The Taiwan High Court on Tuesday reversed a previous verdict and ruled that the KMT should return eight plots in Taipei county, saying the initial decision violated national property law.
'We are surprised by the High Court's decision and basically we would appeal the ruling,' said KMT spokesman Huang Yu Chen.
Local media said the 5,000-ping (4.1-acre) land has a market value between NT$3.5 - 4 billion (US$154 - 177.5 million).
The KMT party workers’ pensions are also funded by the taxpayers’ money 吃國家夠夠
Besides assets, Chang mentioned that there are also other items that are problematic. These include pensions to party workers, which the KMT promised to care and protect, but currently, these retired workers are acting as retired civic servants, and they are receiving pensions from the government that are paid by taxpayers.
Summary
The KMT had misused the stolen assets to fund its campaigns both for the legislative and the presidential elections, the KMT’s assets should be frozen immediately and be returned to the nation’s treasurer, and the elections be voided.
All personnel in the KMT party involved in the financial transactions either directly or implied and the buyers of such transactions be investigated by a national enquiry.
The KMT party should return to the country where the party was initially registered (China) and participate in the elections of that country. There is no such political phenomenon in human history that a party registered in another country can participate in the elections of the other (neighboring) country.
There is no such precedence that an exiled government can take the land of its refuge and claim sovereignty over it, therefore the ROC government must return to its original country especially now that there are no hostile relations between the exiled ROC and the PRC.
Besides all of the above points, a president should not hide any of his/her foreign residence/citizenship records from the voters, Ma’s foreign status should be disclosed.
We demand the president and the legislators be voided by the highest court of Taiwan, and new elections be held immediately under the supervision of an interim civil government constituted of representatives from NGOs, think tanks, academics, and be supervised by foreign independent observers.
Important related reading:
update newer links:
蓬萊島雜誌〈專題系列〉黨產（2）：馬英九把賤賣的黨產吐出來！KMT party property, revisited Other interesting reading:
And if you have time to read a long story, there is one about a Tycoon with a Triad Past who was bailed out of business trouble with the help from the KMT, ordinary citizens who were not “mainlanders” and with no connection to the KMT would not have the same privilege.
and notice the summary near the end of the story:
• Sheen's group runs into trouble with the development of a major Taipei mall but is bailed out with KMT help
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