Mass raids seek Kaohsiung `black gold'

Officials of the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office yesterday raided 40 different locations yesterday searching for evidence of vote-buying in the election of Kaohsiung City Council Speaker Chu An-hsiung (朱安雄).

During the searches some NT$2 million in cash was found in the residence of DPP council caucus whip Jan Yung-lung (詹永龍) which the prosecutors think was used for buying DPP councilors' votes.

Jan denied last night that the money found at his residence had any connection with vote buying.

Fourteen prosecutors and more than one hundred officials from the prosecutors' office searched Chu's residence, his An Feng Metal Company (安峰鋼鐵) offices, the residences of 31 city councilors, including 11 KMT, eight DPP, four PFP and eight independents, and the residence of Kaohsiung City Government's Bureau of Civil Affairs Director Wang Wen-cheng (王文正).

Written notes believed to contain details of the vote-buying were found in Chu's residence, while the accounts of An Feng were seized for examination in yesterday's search.

Chu, an independent city councilor, was elected as the council's speaker Wednesday with 25 votes from KMT, PFP, and independent councilors. He, however, has been suspected of buying votes for his speakership campaign.

The search was launched at 5:30pm yesterday, after Chu held a press conference stressing his innocence and that of the 25 councilors who voted for him.

Chu, however, made no comment on the result of the searches last night.

Political parties, including the DPP and KMT, both expressed their support for the investigation and appealed to their party members to cooperate with prosecutors.

Earlier yesterday, Chu demanded evidence from those politicians who had accused him of involvement in vote-buying for the speakership election and denounced his background of black-gold in a press conference.

"I am sorry for the 25 councilors who voted for me. They are innocent. Those people who accused me of vote-buying should prove it," Chu said.

"I am not a member of any [criminal] gang. How can they denounce me as a black-gold operator?" he said.

In yesterday's conference, Chu said that he was elected because of the irreconcilable conflicts between the political parties.

"High-ranking party officials living in Taipei [without knowing anything of the local society], are unsatisfied with the election result. They blame everything but themselves, despite this [his election as an independent] being the best result of this election," he said, reacting to the KMT and PFP's attempt to unseat him.

Political commentators yesterday said that Chu's election and the vote-buying allegations were just another example of local councils' vote-buying culture.

"This has been a tradition for the councilors. They need to get back the money they spent on their election campaigns from the speakership election," said Chen Li-kan (陳立剛), a political science professor at Soochow University.

"That's why politicians like the KMT's James Chen (陳健治), who is used to this culture, didn't see the vote-buying incident as a big deal," he said.

Chen was the director of the KMT's Organizational Affairs Department. He resigned on Thursday to take responsibility for the speakership election fiasco.

The speaker's position can be a lucrative one because the speaker automatically becomes a member of the city's Urban Planning Commission, a small body which administers city zoning. Huge sums of money can be made by rezoning farmland for commercial use.