More than 77 percent of respondents in a survey conducted by a polling company on behalf of the Zero Party Assets Alliance felt that the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) huge assets create unequal competition between political parties, the alliance told a press conference yesterday.
The poll, conducted on Saturday and Sunday, showed that 58.8 percent of respondents agreed that the assets of political parties should be brought to zero, with 14.3 percent disagreeing.
While 56.3 percent of people polled agreed that political parties should only use political donations and party subsidies to conduct election events, 22.6 percent disagreed.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
A little more than 50 percent of respondents said that parties should not hold any shares or bonds that have value in the markets, while 28.1 percent disagreed.
In addition, 50.9 percent agreed that parties who have held large party assets for a long time were detrimental to the development of democracy, while 29.1 percent disagreed.
Almost 60 percent of respondents agreed that the KMT has had an economic advantage for a long time, with 50.7 percent of respondents saying they knew that the KMT’s assets came from taking over Japanese colonial-era assets, subsidization from national coffers and other special business interests.
A little more than 77 percent of people polled said the KMT’s possession of large party assets was unfair in the competition among political parties, while 8.6 percent said it was fair.
About 55 percent said they were dissatisfied with how President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the KMT presidential candidate, has handled the KMT’s assets, while 13.5 percent were satisfied.
Ma had claimed he would sell off all party assets when he became KMT chairman in 2009, but the KMT received NT$2.9 billion (US$95,82 million) in share dividends that year.
Just over 58 percent of respondents said that political parties should not have party-run businesses or party assets, while 16.9 percent disagreed with that statement and 54.5 percent of the respondents said that only amendments to the Political Party Act (政黨法) would resolve the problems involving party assets.
Alliance convener and head of the Taiwan Association of University Professors, Chang Yen-hsien (張炎憲), said that KMT assets were an old issue, but also one that has not been resolved.
He added that because the presidential election is just over two weeks away, the issue would sharpen the focus on the inequality posed by the KMT’s party assets.
National Taipei University department of public finance professor Huang Shih-hsin (黃世鑫) said that as long as the KMT asset issue existed, normal democratic development in Taiwan would be impossible. He added that the influence of party assets was a problem in the present and the future.
Aside from publishing the poll, the alliance also collected data from an Executive Yuan Web site listing illicit party assets, which was deleted by the Ma administration, and published it on its own Web site at http://zero-kmt.blogspot.com.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
Seven of the 17 NT$10 million (US$311,604) winning receipts from the November-December uniform invoice lottery remain unclaimed as of today, the Ministry of Finance said, urging winners to redeem their prizes by May 5. The reminder comes ahead of the release of the winning numbers for the January-February lottery tomorrow. Among the unclaimed receipts was one for a NT$173 phone bill in Keelung, while others were for a NT$5,913 purchase at Costco in Taipei's Neihu District (內湖), a NT$49 purchase at a FamilyMart in New Taipei City's Tamsui District (淡水), and a NT$500 purchase at a tea shop in New Taipei City's
Taiwanese officials were shown the first of 66 F-16V fighter jets purchased by Taiwan from the United States, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday, adding the aircraft has completed an initial flight test and is expected to be delivered later this year. A delegation led by Deputy Minister of National Defense Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) visited Lockheed Martin’s F-16 C/D Block 70 (also known as F-16V) assembly line in South Carolina on March 16 to view the aircraft. The jet will undergo a final acceptance flight in the US before being delivered to Taiwan, the
Deliveries of delayed F-16V jets are expected to begin in September, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said today, after senior defense officials visited the US last week. The US in 2019 approved a US$8 billion sale of Lockheed Martin F-16 jets to Taiwan, a deal that would take the nation’s F-16 fleet to more than 200 jets, but the project has been hit by issues including software problems. Koo appeared today before a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, which is discussing different versions of the special defense budget this week. The committee is questioning officials today,
TALENT SCOUTING: The university is investing substantial funds in its future to bring in the kind of researchers that would keep the college internationally competitive National Taiwan University (NTU) plans to invest NT$2 billion (US$62.6 million) to launch two programs aimed at attracting and retaining top research talent, university president Chen Wen-chang (陳文章) said yesterday. The funding would support the “Palm Grove Scholars Project,” which targets academics aged 40 to 55. Up to 20 scholars would be selected, each receiving as much as NT$10 million annually, Chen said. The initiative is designed to attract leading researchers to Taiwan and strengthen NTU’s global competitiveness by fostering a more research-friendly environment and expanding international collaboration, he said. NTU is also introducing a “Hong Hu” chair grant, which would provide Palm
RSS