Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday said he “sincerely hoped” that China would keep its hands off the Jan. 14 presidential and legislative elections.
“The Republic of China [ROC] is a country that has independent and integral sovereignty. We are going to elect lawmakers and the president and we don’t want any interference coming from outside the ROC,” Wu said.
Wu made the remarks when asked for a response to comments by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) over the weekend that Beijing was interfering with the elections by helping President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) — its favored candidate in the three-way presidential race — get re-elected.
The DPP said it had evidence that Beijing was interfering in several ways, including sending provincial-level purchasing delegations and providing incentives to mobilize Taiwanese businesspeople in China to return to Taiwan to vote.
The DPP also said that some Taiwanese businesspeople had received threatening calls from Chinese officials warning them against voting for the DPP.
“Many people hope that the elections in the ROC will be free from interference from China, but some people have made claims about [China’s] interference. I can’t stop them from saying that, but I sincerely hope that things like those [alleged by the DPP] didn’t happen,” Wu said.
Wu avoided saying whether he had noticed any efforts by China to influence the elections.
“If there were one or two voters who have felt any impact on their decisionmaking, I hope they are not affected. If people just fabricated the claim, made an exaggeration or blamed us [the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)] for that, then that would be immoral,” he said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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