Yunlin County Council Speaker Chen Ching-hsiu (
Chen was charged for hosting a banquet at a restaurant in Yunlin on the evening of Nov. 5 to drum up support for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative candidate Chang Shuo-wen (
The event, according to Yunlin prosecutors, was in obvious violation of statutes of the Election and Recall Law.
The prosecutors said they had gathered solid evidence and witnesses before bringing the indictment. They are seeking a prison sentence of one-and-a-half years for Chen.
Twelve other people, including Chen's secretary, Hsieh Kun-chou (
About 150 people were entertained at the banquet, the pro-secutors said, adding that 17 of them were questioned on the matter, with eight admitting to having attended the dinner for free.
Meanwhile, KMT legislative caucus whip Huang Teh-fu (黃德福) yesterday accused Premier Yu Shyi-kun of interfering with the judicial process. Yu had earlier suggested that the Public Prosecutors Office had lost its direction in its investigation of DPP legislative nominee Lee Chun-yi (李俊毅) for vote-buying.
Yu has also been accused of "passing judgement" on KMT legislators who currently face investigation on vote-buying charges.
Huang said that Yu had illegally exceeded his authority and that he should take over the job of public prosecutor-general if he wanted to personally direct the campaign against vote buying.
KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (
He pointed to the example of KMT legislative nominee Hsiao Jin-lan (
Huang said that charges against independents Ho Jin-sung (何金松) and Tsai Hao (蔡豪) have been brought just prior to the election, after an investigation lasting three years. Huang questioned the timing of the charges and asked what sort of investigation into vote-buying required three years to complete.
In a related incident in Tainan, calls by Yu protesting the innocence of Li Tsao (李遭) on vote-buying charges led the Tainan District prosecutor to accuse the premier of "passing judgement before the case was brought to trial."
Yu denied this, saying that if prosecutors had solid evidence of vote-buying they should bring it forward immediately, but if there was any uncertainty, they should not reveal their suspicions.
DPP spokesman Chen Chi-mai (
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the