Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) said yesterday he was unaware of any classified information that was allegedly provided to the DPP before Saturday's elections.
The Investigators' Reform Committee on Tuesday alleged that the Bureau of Investigation under the Ministry of Justice had provided classified election-related material to DPP Chairman Frank Hsieh (
According to the reform group, the documents provided information on which candidates were leading in the polls -- and allowed the DPP to adjust their campaign strategies accordingly.
The committee also claims to have evidence of a deal between the Bureau of Investigation and the DPP.
Chen yesterday said the ministry had asked investigators to gather data on who was leading in the polls, but it was only to aid the agency's anti-vote-buying campaign.
"We did ask our investigators to collect information on candidates who were leading the polls," Chen said.
"But it was only for our crack-down on vote-buying because, according to our analysis, those candidates are the ones who were most likely to buy votes, especially a few days before the election."
The reform group said it was disappointed that executive and investigative government agencies failed to remain neutral in the elections.
The committee also said it had contacted DPP headquarters to ask if it had received any classified election documents from the Bureau of Investigation.
DPP spokesman Phoenix Cheng (鄭運鵬) said that the day before voters went to the polls, the DPP did receive what may have been classified election information from the Bureau of Investigation.
But the content of the documents differed greatly from other surveys. As a result, the DPP ignored the materials.
"We doubted that these documents really came from the Bureau of Investigation because they were way too ridiculous when we compared them with other surveys," Cheng said.
"In the past, surveys have been very important to political parties and candidates.
"However, nowadays, everybody knows that many of the surveys are not accurate enough to reflect the real situation," he said
"We just took it as a reference. So it did not affect our campaign at all."
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