National Police Administration (NPA) Director-General Chang Si-liang (
"Maintaining the adminis-tration's neutrality during the by-election is our absolute top priority," Chang said.
Chang was speaking at a press conference held by the KMT legislative caucus to urge the government not to take sides while conducting its campaign to stamp out vote buying in the Hualien election this Saturday.
Chang said he had also ordered the 480 police officers carrying out the Hualien crackdown not to campaign for candidates while in police uniform.
However, KMT legislative caucus leader Liu Cheng-hung (
"It's quite suspicious. Was Chang Lin was forced to leave Hualien merely because of his insistence on abiding by administrative neutrality?" Liu asked.
Chang Si-liang responded by saying that the administration "promoted Chang Lin only because of his outstanding performance and abilities, and I am 100 percent sure there's no political interference connected to the promotion."
"Since I came became NPA commissioner on July 1, I have been formulating a list of officers who deserve to be rewarded for their service," Chang, Si-liang said, adding that rumors the promotion of Chang Lin stemmed from a decision by Premier Yu Shyi-kun are groundless.
Meanwhile, KMT Legislator Liao Feng-teh (
"If the government is determined make a list of names public, we think the names of all the candidates' local campaigners should be disclosed," Liao said.
KMT Legislator Cheng Feng-shih (
However, Chang Si-liang said this is because there is no air-conditioning in some police precincts in rural Hualien and some officers have been moved to bigger stations with air-con.
"In the summer heat, it would be far better to sleep on the floor in an air-conditioned room than sweat all night after a hard day's work," Chang Si-liang said.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
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