President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) should be fined NT$500,000 in his capacity as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman for citing opinion polls within 10 days of an election, the Yilan County Election Commission monitoring committee said yesterday.
The committee submitted its suggestion to the commission yesterday, which will make a decision today.
Article 53 of the Election and Recall Act (選舉罷免法) prohibits individuals and political parties from reporting, publishing, commenting on or quoting the results of opinion polls in the 10 days before an election.
On Nov. 25, speaking at a KMT Central Standing Committee meeting in Yilan County, Ma cited an opinion poll as indicating that the race in Yilan would be tight and party members should step up campaign efforts. The next day, the KMT apologized on behalf of Ma and said he was not trying to influence the election.
KMT Secretary-General Chan Chun-po (詹春柏) said Ma had not realized that there were less than 10 days until the election. Chan also said Ma did not break the law because his comments were made at a KMT meeting, not a public event.
When asked for comment yesterday, KMT Spokesman Lee Chien-jung (李建榮) said the party would respect and accept the commission’s decision.
In other news, Hualien District prosecutors yesterday said they had solid evidence that a candidate who won a township chief election bought votes and would therefore seek to have his election annulled.
Huang Rong-cheng (黃榮成) of the KMT won in Guangfu Township (光復).
Prosecutors said they were writing a petition to have Huang’s victory annulled and would produce an indictment as soon as possible.
Although Huang won the election, he was taken into custody on Saturday over vote-buying allegations. Until then, Huang had been the only candidate in the township who was not in detention. His two rivals for township chief, Chen Wen-kuang (陳文光) and Lin Yuan-jui (林元瑞), also of the KMT, are also being detained on suspicion of vote-buying.
Prosecutors had sought to detain Huang on Thursday, but the court allowed him to go free on bail of NT$100,000. The prosecutors later appealed, presenting additional evidence, and received permission to detain Huang on the day of the election.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
OBJECTS AT SEA: Satellites with synthetic-aperture radar could aid in the detection of small Chinese boats attempting to illegally enter Taiwan, the space agency head said Taiwan aims to send the nation’s first low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite into space in 2027, while the first Formosat-8 and Formosat-9 spacecraft are to be launched in October and 2028 respectively, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council laid out its space development plan in a report reviewed by members of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee. Six LEO satellites would be produced in the initial phase, with the first one, the B5G-1A, scheduled to be launched in 2027, the council said in the report. Regarding the second satellite, the B5G-1B, the government plans to work with private contractors
RSS