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Prosecutors to work at police precincts for vote

"However, if you look at the numbers harder, you find that real vote-buying cases are decreasing."

Chen Ding-nan, Minister of Justice

Beginning today, the nation's 1,650 prosecutors will be stationed at police precincts to allow them to work closely with the police in a crackdown on vote-buying during the presidential election, the Ministry of Justice said yesterday.

The ministry said that prosecutors will be standing by 24 hours a day until the election is over.

The idea behind stationing prosecutors at police precincts is to save time when law enforcement officers receive tips about vote-buying. In addition, prosecutors will help the police organize their bribery crackdown.

"There are only a few hours left before election day. We want to remind all of the vote captains as well as the candidates again to stay away from vote-buying. It will ruin your future, your career and everything in your life," Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) said.

In the meantime, according to the ministry's latest statistics, 1,579 cases related to vote-buying have been reported to local prosecutors' offices. However, as of March 12, only 40 of those cases had been wrapped up by prosecutors. Thirty-eight of the cases were confirmed as minor vote-buying cases and transferred to local district courts for trials. Two cases were dropped because no sufficient evidence was found.

Chen said that only about 200 bribery-related cases were reported during the last presidential election. Chen urged people to look at these figures with a positive attitude.

"There seem to be more potential vote-buyers today. However, if you look at the numbers harder, you find that real vote-buying cases are decreasing," Chen said.

"This means that the government is working harder on cracking down on vote-buying than ever and law enforcement officers' efforts have worked," Chen said.

In this year's election, the ministry says that prosecutors have received more allegations of vote-buying cases in southern Taiwan. However, in most of these cases, prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to proceed.

According to prosecutors, vote captains in Tainan have offered cheap election-day transportation -- such as NT$100 round-trip bus tickets from Taipei to Tainan -- to students who are Tainan natives but are studying elsewhere in the country.

In Pingtung, vote captains were rumored to have tried to buy votes at the price of NT$1,500 each. But the ministry says that these rumors had not been confirmed to be real bribery cases as of press time yesterday.

"Southern Taiwan is our focus for the bribery crackdown," Chen said.

"We have a stricter measures for the crackdown in the south, too. But hopefully our stricter measures will never be used against any vote captains," Chen said.
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