With only three days left to election day, the Kaohsiung City mayoral campaign seems to have become a fight primarily over two scandals: the rezoning of public land for private use by KMT election candidate Huang Jun-ying (
Hsieh had accused Wu Den-yi (
Following a confrontation between Wu, Huang and Hsieh outside a prosecutors' office on Monday about whose administration was to blame, Deputy Mayor Lin Yung-chien (林永堅) yesterday said the case should be left to the judicial authorities.
Nevertheless, Lin said the speed with which Wu and Huang's administration had approved of the rezoning was was suspicious.
The application had been stamped 40 times during the last two days of Wu and Huang's administration in December 1998, Lin said.
Wu and Huang's accusation against Hsieh center on a check for NT$4.5 million allegedly written to Hsieh in 1994 by Zanadau majority shareholder Su Hui-chen (蘇惠珍).
Hsieh said yesterday that until the KMT provided the original copy of the check instead of just displaying a false one to the public, he would not comment on the issue.
However, he said that the evidence against his opponents' misconduct in the rezoning case was very clear. It was inappropriate for the land to be allocated for private sector use when 90 percent of it belonged to the city government, he said.
"It was obvious that [the rezoning procdedure], which started under the Wu-Huang administration, was intended to benefit them and a third party," Hsieh said.
Responding to the city government's decision to prosecute him, Wu, a KMT lawmaker, said that the rezoning was actually approved by the minister of the interior, who had knowledge that the land was being rezoned for private use.
Wu also said that although the application of the rezoning case was approved by his administration, all subsequent steps for approval were made by the Hsieh administration.
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