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.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to start construction of its 1.4-nanometer chip manufacturing facilities at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP, 中部科學園區) as early as October, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing the park administration. TSMC acquired land for the second phase of the park’s expansion in Taichung in June. Large cement, construction and facility engineering companies in central Taiwan have reportedly been receiving bids for TSMC-related projects, the report said. Supply-chain firms estimated that the business opportunities for engineering, equipment and materials supply, and back-end packaging and testing could reach as high as
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Democratic nations should refrain from attending China’s upcoming large-scale military parade, which Beijing could use to sow discord among democracies, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) said. China is scheduled to stage the parade on Wednesday next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The event is expected to mobilize tens of thousands of participants and prominently showcase China’s military hardware. Speaking at a symposium in Taichung on Thursday, Shen said that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to New Delhi.
FINANCES: The KMT plan to halt pension cuts could bankrupt the pension fund years earlier, undermining intergenerational fairness, a Ministry of Civil Service report said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus’ proposal to amend the law to halt pension cuts for civil servants, teachers and military personnel could accelerate the depletion of the Public Service Pension Fund by four to five years, a Ministry of Civil Service report said. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) on Aug. 14 said that the Act Governing Civil Servants’ Retirement, Discharge and Pensions (公務人員退休資遣撫卹法) should be amended, adding that changes could begin as soon as after Saturday’s recall and referendum. In a written report to the Legislative Yuan, the ministry said that the fund already faces a severe imbalance between revenue