DPP's Lee refuses prosecutor's call

DPP Deputy Secretary General Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) yesterday refused to attend a court hearing to answer charges that he tried to buy votes in the Hualien County commissioner by-election.

Lee was charged by the Hualien Prosecutors' Office for a DPP campaign promise to give a monthly allowance of NT$5,000 to Hualien's Aboriginal chieftains if the party's candidate, You Ying-lung (游盈隆), was elected as the county's commissioner.

However, the KMT-PFP alliance camp say that the campaign promise was a kind of "policy vote-buying" in which electoral candidates appealed to the voters through making promises to benefit the voters if they voted in favor of the government candidate.

During the Hualien by-election campaign, the DPP was accused by the pan-blue camp of using government resources to make excessive and unrealistic promises in order to woo voters' support.

Lee yesterday was absent from the court's hearing in Hualien and denounced the prosecutors for interfering in politics.

"I can't agree with certain prosecutors' attitudes and intentions in dealing with the case. I think it unnecessary for me to go on this show plotted by them," Lee told a local cable TV network.

Lee stressed that -- since he was neither the candidate nor the campaign manager for You -- he did not and could not have announced this policy on behalf of You's campaign.

He said the prosecutors' actions to bring charges against him were a misuse of judicial power and were nothing more than a politically motivated trap.

"I have to say that certain mischievous prosecutors collaborated with the KMT in this plot in a bid to elevate the by-election to a party-to-party dual," Lee said.

Lee said it seemed "unthinkable" to him for the prosecutors in Hualien to name him as the defendant, since the policy in question was proposed by You and not him.

"The prosecutors could have closed this case before the election, but they delayed until now, which allowed the media to run extensive coverage on the case before the election. As a defendant, I find it unacceptable," Lee said.

In related news, Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) yesterday broke his silence for the first time since the by-election to explain his policy on the 24-hour checkpoints in Hualien intended to prevent vote-buying and election bribery.

The crackdown was attacked by Hualien Chief Prosecutor Yang Ta-chih (楊大智), who said the anti-corruption measures violated human rights and therefore were unconstitutional.

Yu insisted yesterday that the crackdown on election corruption was not unconstitutional and, if necessary, he would comply with an investigation by the Control Yuan -- the government's watchdog agency.

The anti-corruption crackdown is believed to have cost the DPP heavily in the by-election, as many Hualien residents found it repulsive to be under the 24-hour surveillance by police and therefore voted against the DPP candidate.