The Question the Tsai Gov’t Must Answer: Who Ordered the Disbursement?

  The Question the Tsai Gov’t Must Answer: Who Ordered the Disbursement?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

November 16, 2017

 Translation of an Excerpt

The minesweepers case has brought climax after climax; after the Presidential Palace rebuked reports that Ching Fu's vice chairman Chen Wei-jyh had entered the Presidential Palace, it immediately found out that he indeed entered the Presidential Palace at the end of September last year, meeting James Huang (黃志芳), then head of the New Southward Policy Office. However, Huang’s position, authority, and duties at the time could not necessarily cover the disbursement relationship between the Ministry of National Defense and Ching Fu; as it is known to all, it is a fact that Ching Fu obtained NT$2.4 billion in funds from the military. Also because of this, who was mediating the whole matter and ordered the Ministry of National Defense to divert budgets for other weapons systems and equipment to pay Ching Fu is a question that the Tsai government must answer. Without this piece of the jigsaw puzzle, it would be impossible to have a fair and complete picture of the minesweepers scandal.

Earlier, the outside world had always placed its focus of attention in this case on whether the operations in the public tender, there were irregularities of breaking the rules, and whether the First Commercial Bank, in organizing the syndicated loan, had any irregularities of profiteering others. However, viewed from the details of the case exposed in recent days, the behind-the-scenes operations and administrative negligence and omissions of the whole case were far more complex than people imagined.

Following the exposure of the recording file, all circles have trained their focus on: Who had such capacity to order the military to disburse prematurely NT$ 2.4 billion as the third stage contract payment to Ching Fu? This question can be divided into three subsidiary questions: First, in accordance with the bilateral contract, even if Ching Fu had completed its shipbuilding work in advance of schedule, if the Ministry of National Defense did not have a budget in that fiscal year, the military could delay payment. However, the Defense Ministry, under pressure from an unknown source, surprisingly diverted other military funds for disbursement. Second, the Defense Ministry forcibly diverted from nine different weapons procurement budgets and lumped together NT$2.4 billion to advance the payment to Ching Fu. Besides involving the violation of budget laws, was there harm done to the integral deployment of military strength of the armed forces? Third, the Navy disbursed the funds to Ching Fu at the end of last year, but officials from the Defense Ministry, when interpellated at the Legislative Yuan, surprisingly responded by telling a lie, claiming that the funds had not been disbursed. This not only involved deceiving the parliament, but also maliciously misleading the public, so much so that the case could not be subject to normal oversight within the system.

In the policy of locally manufacturing navy ships that both the Blue and Green parties all believe to be extremely important, why did the government have no will, no determination and no standards of norms in the process of pushing the policy, deliberately letting it stray from the course step by step? Just who ordered the Ministry of Defense to divert funds to Ching Fu from budgets for weapons for the three services of the armed forces? This at a minimum is a question that the Tsai government can answer. Otherwise, allowing the buck to be passed and obligations to be shirked, how could the Defense Ministry shoulder the heavy responsibility of building navy ships?

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