The report will be posted on the Cabinet’s Web site to rally support for a Democratic Progressive Party campaign to initiate a referendum on NT$24.3 billion worth of government property the former ruling party is alleged to have unlawfully acquired.

In the report, Hsu adds at least NT$217.5 billion the Kuomintang owed the government as what it should try to recover to have transitional justice done.

Real estate the Kuomintang seized is dealt with in the first part of the Hsu report.

Most of it was acquired by the KMT from the government through transfer of titles to the property owned by the Japanese in Taiwan.

Japanese were repatriated after Taiwan was restored to the Republic of China at the end of the Second World War in 1945. They left real estate totaling 147 hectares, estimated at NT$24.2 billion.

KMT-operated companies such as the Broadcasting Corporation of China and the Central Motion Pictures Company took over the property, according to the Hsu report,

The second part of the report lists the subsidies the KMT government gave the party organizations and businesses.

One of the chief beneficiaries is the Chinese Women’s Anti-Communist League, which Madame Chiang Kai-shek headed. The organization collected more than NT$100 billion in “troop-cheering” surtax. But no detailed auditing was available, the report points out.

Another is the Youth Corps, which was commissioned to organize youth activities with huge government funds year after year for more than four decades.

Aside from the BCC and the CMPC, such Kuomintang companies as the Central News Agency, the Central Daily News, the China Daily News and the Central Radio Station were given subsidies.

All these subsidies are estimated at NT$49.1 billion.

In addition, the Hsu report includes in what the Kuomintang owed the government the NT$87.1 billion it helped exempt its enterprises from paying as business tax between 1993 and 2005.

The report also covers the Kuomintang debt to the government in other forms that totals a mere NT$300 million.

But only the ill-gotten government land and real estate are likely to be included as the Kuomintang debt, for the recovery of which is on the agenda for the referendum the ruling party wishes to call alongside the presidential election in March next year.

Apparently, the premier is letting the public go online to find out how much the Kuomintang owes the government to boost his popularity in order to edge out his predecessor Frank Hsieh in the DPP primary on May 6 and in in-house polls that will follow.

Hsieh is running neck and neck with the premier, with two other presidential hopefuls, Vice President Annette Lu and DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun, trailing far behind.

The liquidation of the Kuomintang will work to benefit Su greatly, if he is nominated.

Much of the Kuomintang assets was not returned, while Ma Ying-jeou was chairman of the opposition party. In particular, Ma did not keep the promise to complete the sales of the BCC, the CMPC and the China Television Company.

Su or Hsieh will be able to harass Ma, who seems almost unbeatable in the 2008 race despite his standing trial for corruption.

However, the DPP has failed to collect enough signatures to endorse its proposal to hold the referendum. At least 800,000 signatures have to be gathered in the next two months, but the endorsement is only less than 10 percent complete.

Fully aware of Ma’s vulnerability, Kuomintang secretary-general Wu Den-yih lashed out at the premier for “bad-mouthing” against the opposition party.

“The Legislative Yuan is the nation’s highest executive organ,” Wu said. “Don’t relegate it into a bad-mouthing institution,” he warned.

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