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Kaohsiung pair guilty of vote-buying after appeal

The Taiwan High Court’s Kaohsiung branch yesterday found two men guilty of vote-buying during the Kaohsiung mayoral election in December 2006, overturning a District Court verdict.

The court sentenced Ku Hsin-ming (古鋅酩) to three years and six months in prison, adding that he could appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court. Tsai Neng-hsiang (蔡能祥) was given a four-month sentence, which can be commuted to a fine, but not appealed.

Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member, accused Ku and Tsai of handing out money to supporters of her Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) mayoral rival Huang Chun-ying (黃俊英) as they traveled to an election-eve rally in chartered buses on Dec. 8, 2006.

The two later admitted giving the bus passengers NT$500 each in return for their votes for “a candidate in the Kaohsiung mayoral election and a Kaohsiung city councilor candidate.”

Ku was considered the main instigator of the vote-buying.

The Kaohsiung District Court found the two men not guilty last November, a decision that angered the Kaohsiung prosecutors in charge of the case.

While acknowledging that the men had distributed the money, the District Court accepted Ku and Tsai’s explanation that the money was payment for attending the rally. Since the recipients were not required to vote for Huang, it was not vote-buying, the court said.

Yesterday’s ruling said that while people attending the rally were all given snacks and drinks, which could be seen as payment for going to the rally, the NT$500 was a bribe for their votes.

Chen said yesterday that the verdict proved the vote-buying allegation against the pair and proved that she had not staged the incident to sabotage Huang’s election chances.

She urged President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to apologize, referring to his comment on Dec. 12, 2006, that he “strongly suspected” the DPP had staged the incident.

“I don’t know how President Ma feels about the verdict,” she said.

Additional reporting by Flora Wang
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