Prosecutors in Hualien yesterday complained that their superiors were paying too much attention to cracking down on bribery related to next month's Hualien County commissioner by-election.
"We Hualien prosecutors already know how to do our jobs. We do not need our superiors to show us how to accomplish our mission," said Yang Ta-chih (楊大智), a chief prosecutor at the Hualien District Prosecutors' Office.
Yang made the remark during a meeting to discuss the crackdown on election-related bribery which was chaired by Minster of the Interior Yu Chen-hsien (
"We do believe that local prosecutors know what they are doing and will successfully prevent bribery during the election," Chen said. "Honestly, today's meeting is more like a promotional event. We hope to warn potential vote-buyers not to do so by asking high-ranking law enforcement officials to meet here to show our concern and our determination to tackle vote-buying.
"Our experience and statistics showed us that bribery was not news in Hualien during past elections so we have to do this. It is like a constant reminder to vote-buyers," he said.
As part of the crackdown, Yu has also transferred 480 police officers from other counties to establish an anti-vote-buying task force.
Yang, however, said that local prosecutors and police officers have already reached a tacit agreement on how to investigate crimes.
The arrival of high-ranking law-enforcement officials and the transfer of more police officers also seemed to humiliate local prosecutors and police officers.
"It seems to me that we do not know how to do our jobs so our superiors need to ask somebody else to show us," Yang said.
Huang Yi-chun (
"They do not even know their way around downtown Hualien. How can they carry out their mission?" she said. "To transfer so many officers from other locations is a waste of manpower."
Yesterday's meeting was also attended by National Police Administration Commissioner Chang Si-liang (
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS