The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday accused the police of sabotaging the pan-green camp’s campaign activities to give the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) an edge in next Saturday’s local elections and likened the situation to the White Terror.
In the last two days, police cracked down on pan-green camp campaign activities in Hsinchu and Keelung, saying the DPP had failed to apply for permission to canvass on the streets, the DPP said.
“The practice of canvassing on the street has been used in Taiwan for years. Since when does a candidate need to apply for road rights to stump for votes?” DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said.
DPP Kaohsiung City Councilor Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) said police tried to prevent Hung Seng-yong (洪森永), a DPP candidate for the Keelung City Council, and his motorcade from making the rounds yesterday afternoon, saying Hung had not applied for permission.
Shortly prior to Hung’s scheduled road show, his campaign headquarters received a phone call from Keelung police warning Hung that the activity would violate the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), Chao said.
This was the first time that Hung had been informed of the seven-day application period required for street campaigns in the city, Chao said, adding that neither Hung nor rival KMT candidates had been stopped by the police during street campaigning in recent weeks.
“We decided to ignore the warning and took to the streets. The police followed us the entire way and collected evidence by filming every person participating in Hung’s campaign. If this isn’t White Terror tactics, I don’t know what is,” Chao said.
The DPP and its supporters staged a sit-in protest in front of the Keelung Second Police Precinct to demand an explanation from the police chief.
The protest ended at around 8pm after Keelung Second Police Precinct chief Chen I-feng (陳逸峰) met the protesters and said that the police had not been “collecting evidence.”
He said the police were doing their duty to ensure the safety of the candidates, as yesterday marked the first day of the official campaign period in the run-up to next Saturday’s election.
Heated clashes also erupted between KMT and DPP supporters on Tuesday night in Hsinchu when the police blocked off streets while President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) accompanied the KMT’s Hsinchu County commissioner candidate, Chiu Ching-chun (邱鏡淳), on a visit to a night market in Jhubei City (竹北), obstructing a DPP campaign group led by former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷).
Scuffles broke out between supporters from the two camps after the DPP supporters protested against the police blocking the streets for Ma, who doubles as KMT chairman.
Hsieh was promoting the DPP’s Hsinchu County commissioner candidate, Peng Shao-chin (彭紹瑾), at a campaign event in the area.
On his blog, Hsieh said he was pushed and shoved by police as he tried to cross a street to shake hands with voters.
The police insisted no one was allowed through because the president was coming, Hsieh wrote.
“I have walked on these streets for 30 years during election seasons. I merely wanted to cross the road to shake hands with residents, but the police refused to let us through ... All roads had to be cleared to make way for Ma,” Hsieh wrote. “It is regrettable that 22 years after the end of martial law, Taiwan’s freedom is being destroyed by Ma’s KMT.”
RSS