Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) yesterday labeled the accusations of Chief Prosecutor Yang Ta-chih (楊大智) for the Hualien District Prosecutors' Office, who also acts as spokesman for the office, against Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) "outrageous" and said he had ordered the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office to investigate whether Yang had been "too talkative" for a spokesman.
"I have asked prosecutors from the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office to begin their investigation immediately," Chen said. "Yang's remarks have seriously damaged prosecutors' public image."
Chen's comments on the controversy came in a speech during the inauguration ceremony of 16 newly assigned prosecutors-general of local prosecutors' offices.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Chen said Yang had taken advantage of his media connections to hold a press conference on Wednesday to criticize Yu -- by asking a judiciary reporter from the United Daily News to inform colleagues on the same beat of the press conference.
That reporter asked the campaign headquarters of Hualien Country commissioner candidate Hsieh Shen-shan (謝深山) of the KMT-PFP alliance, for help in getting the message out by means of cellphone text messaging.
Chen said the text message sent to reporters on Wednesday read "Hualien Chief Prosecutor Yang Ta-chih will hold a press conference at 8:30am at the prosecutors' office to criticize Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien's ordering 24-hour spot checks on the main roads and highways in Hualien."
Chen said that the job of a prosecutor's office spokesperson is to make public announcements or explain cases the prosecutors are working on.
However, he said, Yang's remarks did not involve "explaining" prosecutors' work.
"Everybody knows that prosecutors should remain neutral when it comes to politics. To me, Yang has abused his job," Chen said. "Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that he doesn't have the right to speak out. But he chose the wrong way."
Chen said that since Yang's message to reporters was distributed by a candidate's campaign headquarters, prosecutors would come under attack from the election losers, who could argue that the prosecutors had helped or endorsed certain candidates instead of remaining neutral.
"This has greatly damaged us, all the prosecutors," Chen said. "I am really very upset about this."
Yang told reporters that he had no response to Chen's remarks.
"Cracking down on bribery is my current priority and I just want to do my job well," he said.
Meanwhile, Chen said he has also asked the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office to investigate whether somebody from the Hualien District Prosecutors' Office or the Hualien County Police Department is leaking classified information to reporters.
He was referring to a front-page story in the China Times yesterday that said that a classified document from the Hualien County Police Department showed that both Hsieh and DPP candidate You Ying-lung (游盈隆) were being investigated for bribery.
"Investigations are not to be made public is the first lesson we teach law-enforcement officers at boot camp. It seems to me that somebody, either a prosecutor or a police officer, has forgotten this rule and we must find out who it is," Chen said.
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