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Political party act
stalled
DELAYED ONCE AGAIN: The draft act, which deals
with regulations on political parties’ finances, was pulled from the Executive
Yuan’s agenda without reason
By Chiu Yen-ling and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff
writer
The Executive Yuan was yesterday scheduled to review the draft political party
act (政黨法), but before the meeting was to take place, the draft was pulled from
the schedule, without the official who was to review the act knowing about it.
Minister Without Portfolio Luo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪), who was tasked with reviewing
the act, said the draft included restrictions barring political parties from
investing in property and making money, setting a two-year time limit for
parties to transfer ownership or sell off all their assets, as well as various
regulations on the conditions of founding political parties.
It is a complete set of regulations concerning political parties, Luo said.
However, Luo said during an investigation yesterday that she did not know why
the draft act had been pulled from the schedule, adding that she had also asked
a colleague to ask for her, but she had been working the entire day yesterday
and had not yet contacted her coworker to ask about the news.
Commenting on suspicions that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) or other
sources had applied pressure, Luo said that she had not felt any pressure
whatsoever when going through the case.
“Even if there was any pressure, I would not be influenced anyway,” Luo said,
adding that she was still in the dark as to why the issue had been pulled from
the meeting.
Executive Yuan spokesman Hu You-wei (胡幼偉) said afterwards that the draft act had
been pulled because some minor details had to be ironed out.
However, Hu had not elaborated in detail what needed to be worked out.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has come under criticism by the Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) many times for failing to keep the repeated promises to
promote the Sunshine Law, which includes the Political Party Act, that he made
while he was KMT chairman in 2005.
The Sunshine Law is a law or series of laws based around the assumption that
citizens under a democratic government have the right to know how their
government has reached decisions concerning public welfare legislation.
The DPP claims since Ma was elected president in 2008, the KMT has used its
majority in the legislature to delay the passing of the draft act.
The Ma administration sent back the DPP’s version of the act from the
legislature for further review in November 2008 and did not send another draft
of the act to the Executive Yuan until May 2010.
Since then, the much-delayed draft act has been stalled in the Executive Yuan
for more than two years, and has yet to be seen or reviewed by the Legislative
Yuan.
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