A committee charged with handling ill-gotten political party assets was established on Wednesday.
The committee is being set up as the government seeks to control the kind of assets political parties can hold. In July, the legislature passed a law stating that assets obtained by political parties after 1945 are illegal and must be returned to the state. This does not include party membership fees and political donations. The KMT has protested against the law, which it says is unconstitutional.
Premier Lin Chuan said Wednesday that this is a step forward in Taiwan’s path towards transitional justice and fair competition between political parties. But he said that the committee’s work may not be easy.
"In 1990, Germany also established an independent committee to investigate the assets of political parties and large organizations," said Lin. "The committee worked for 16 years before it completed its mission in 2006. I imagine that the work ahead will also be very complicated and difficult and will require determination."
Meanwhile head of the committee, Wellington Koo, says that Taiwan has been through three democratic transfers of power between political parties since the end of martial law, but that the problem of ill-gotten party assets has not been resolved. Koo said he hopes that ill-gotten assets can be exposed so that Taiwan can complete its journey to democracy.