A high-ranking police officer in charge of the crackdown on vote-buying will retire early. His retirement comes less than a month before the year-end elections.
Yu Yue-tang (
However, the media speculated yesterday that intense pressure on Yu to crack down hard on vote-buying may have led him to retire early.
Yu will now retire this Saturday, instead of January next year as he had planned.
Minister of the Interior Chang Po-ya (
Yu was selected to oversee the crackdown because of his extensive police experience. The impact that his retirement will have on the crackdown is still unclear.
His early retirement may also hasten a reshuffling of police personnel which was originally scheduled to happen next year.
To boost the crackdown, the police administration has adopted a carrot-and-stick approach in which officers will be allowed to investigate vote-buying cases beyond their duty areas. The administration has offered promotions to officers who expose such cases, while heavy punishments await officers who fail to uncover incidents that are cracked by officers from other areas.
The reports also quoted an unnamed police officer as saying a vigorous crackdown on vote-buying risks destroying criminal informant networks the police have built up.
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