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 (
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
RSS