The Kaohsiung District Prosec-utors' Office said yesterday it had sufficient evidence to indict a DPP lawmaker and a KMT lawmaker for vote-buying and had detained six vote captains, three for each of the legislators.
The lawmakers named were Hsu Chih-ming (
Prosecutors said during a press conference that investigators had detained three vote captains working for Hsu and another three working for Hsiao for further investigation. They said investigations into the two lawmakers' activities were completed yesterday and that they would indict them "probably some time next week." A Kaohsiung County police officer, surnamed Chang (張), who had been involved in the investigation, said that Hsu was trying to buy votes with stainless steel pots, examples of which, he said, had been found at Hsu's campaign headquarters in Kaohsiung County.
The officer said that Hsiao, on the other hand, was bribing voters with detection pens designed to identify counterfeit currency. Investigators, he said, had found detection pens at Hsiao's campaign headquarters as well as an alleged list of recipients.
"Again, our investigators have shown their capacity to catch vote-buying candidates and their vote captains," said Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南).
"I sincerely urge politicians of other parties to stop complaining that our action to rid vote-buying amounts to `green terror' because it isn't. We have found suspects from different parties, including the DPP. That means we have the determination to enforce the law.
"We will definitely catch the criminals, no matter what political party the suspects belong to."
In a separate case, Kaohsiung City police said they had caught a female vote captain trying to hand over NT$2,500 in exchange for five votes.
The 64-year-old suspect, Huang Ho-liu (
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