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Prosecutors target vote shenanigans in Kaohsiung City

Kaohsiung prosecutors stepped up their campaign against vote-buying yesterday, detaining one person and releasing three others on bail for allegedly buying votes for a city councilor candidate.

The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved a prosecutors' request to detain a vote captain of Kaohsiung City councilor candidate Su Yu-chu (蘇玉柱), who is running for a seat representing Kaohsiung's fifth constituency, which includes Chienchen and Hsiaokang districts.

The four alleged vote-buyers are all employees of the Kaohsiung City Newspaper Stand Owners' Association, of which Su is the chairman.

Kaohsiung prosecutors claim that the four, Hsu Shu-chu (許淑珠), Cheng Hui-chu (鄭慧珠), Wu Su-man (吳素滿) and Chen Fu-chen (陳富珍) allegedly paid NT$500 to association members to buy their votes.

Hsu, the most senior of the employees, refused to say whether they were acting under Su's instructions.

Prosecutor Lin Yung-fu (林永富) said that the police raided the association's office on Friday afternoon and discovered NT$600,000 in cash and a list of voters' names, all members of the association.

"Hsu could not clearly explain where this money came from and what it was for. That was why we decided to detain her," Lin said.

Lin summoned the suspects on Saturday afternoon. The court agreed to release Cheng and Wu on NT$50,000 bail and Chen on NT$30,000 bail.

In the past two weeks, two city councilors, a councilor candidate and four vote captains have been investigated for vote-buying ahead of the city councillor elections in Kaohsiung on Dec. 7.

In one case, candidate Hung Hsueh-hai (洪學海) and two of his vote captains, Tsai Shui-tien (蔡水添) and Hsu Jin-bang (許金榜), were indicted on Friday after they allegedly treated voters to a free dinner on Nov. 3.

Prosecutors have recommended a 18-month sentence for Hung, a 10-month sentence for Hsu and six months for Tsai. Hung and Su are competing in the same constituency.

On Saturday, prosecutors detained KMT City Councilor Chang Ray-te (張瑞德) and his brother Chang Chieh-min (張詰旻) for allegedly buying votes, also by treating voters to a free dinner.

And on Nov. 16, independent City Councilor Huang Fang-jen (黃芳仁) was detained for allegedly buying votes for NT$500 each.
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