The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday established a task force to investigate allegations that Sunny Bank managing director Hsueh Ling (薛凌) bought votes in exchange for DPP party members' support in her bid for a legislator-at-large position.
The task force was formed following yesterday's complaint to party headquarters by former DPP member and Zanadau majority shareholder Su Hui-chen (
Su said yesterday that vote-buying in the DPP's primary was most rampant in two townships in Kaohsiung County -- Ta-liao (大寮) and Meinung (美濃).
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-TEH, TAIPEI TIMES
Su alleged that Hsueh had given bribes in the form of NT$500 in cash and gift boxes containing sausage, and that leaflets had been distributed encouraging recipients to exchange their votes for these items.
Su said that in addition to giving gifts, Hsueh had also offered improper loans to party members through Sunny Bank.
"The leaflets had one thing in common: They all asked voters to cast their ballot for Hsueh Ling," Su said.
Vote exchanges, which are deals struck between candidates in multiple-office elections, are common occurrences in the DPP's internal elections. An example of a vote-exchange arrangement would be an arrangement between a legislative candidate and a local chapter head in which the two agree to ask their supporters to back each other's candidacies. Hsueh is accused of vote-buying, a more serious allegation.
Su yesterday presented documents that she said indicated that Hsueh had granted improper loans to DPP lawmaker Lin Chin-hsing (
Su urged DPP authorities to look into the vote-buying matter, saying that having Hsueh at the top of the party's candidate list for legislators-at-large would taint the party's image and hurt the party in the year-end legislative elections.
The process for choosing at-large legislators is a two-round process. With one round completed, Hsueh still must perform well in a DPP opinion poll to win a spot on the candidate list.
"I've heard from many pan-blue supporters who have said they will vote for Hsueh in the DPP's telephone opinion poll to make sure Hsueh is on the DPP's legislator-at-large list. That way, the pan-blue alliance could cash in on the issue and wage a negative campaign against the DPP on the basis of vote-buying in the primaries. This would finish the DPP in the legislative elections," said the outspoken Su, who previously charged that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chief cashier Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英) had received kickbacks from her but then refused to grant her loans for the Zanadau Development (新瑞都) case.
The vote-buying task force will be headed by DPP Secretary-General Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄), who yesterday instructed lawyers to study the evidence Su presented.
In response to Su's request for immunity from party disciplinary action for witnesses who testify against Hsueh, DPP Deputy Secretary-General Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) yesterday said the party would consider a system to allow witnesses to testify with protection.
According to the party's rules, candidates involved in vote-buying will lose their spots on the party's candidate list, while party members who accept bribes will be suspended from the party for up to three years.
Meanwhile, amid the vote-buying controversy, senior DPP Legislator Yen Ching-fu (
Yen said the DPP faces grave danger of losing the legislative battle if it can't face up to vote-buying problems. However, some observers said that Yeh had withdrawn because he didn't perform well in the primary's first round.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching