The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) candidate for the Ilan County commissionership yesterday swore he has not tried bribing people to vote for him in Saturday's elections.
"If I were to be involved in bribery, I would resign even if I won the election," Chen Ding-nan (
Former justice minister Chen was responding to journalists' questions about one of his vote captains, Lee Yuan-wu (
Lee has been released on NT$200,000 (US$6,000) bail.
Chen said he first learned about the investigation against Lee from a TV news report yesterday.
When he saw TV coverage of the story flashing a headline reading "Chen Ding-nan is involved in a bribery case," he immediately asked his campaign staff to contact TV stations and ask them to release corrections, Chen said.
"Lee is one of my vote captains, but what he allegedly did has nothing to do with the campaign headquarters. Nobody knows what he did, so even if he did bribe voters, he did not do it on my orders," Chen said.
According to Ilan prosecutors, Lee allegedly gave away free dinner tickets worth NT$200 each to more than 60 voters in Nanao (南澳) for an event in Ilan on Sunday night. Apparently he also provided free bus transportation to the dinner.
In addition to 55 unused dinner tickets that were discovered at Lee's residence, many of the Nanao residents who attended the dinner party told prosecutors that they had accepted the tickets as bribes.
Chen said that his campaign headquarters did not organize the dinner party, nor did he attend it.
Prosecutors have discovered that not everybody who attended the event had gotten their tickets from Lee.
"The evidence we have collected so far only hints at Lee's involvement, and we do not have sufficient evidence to make us believe that a candidate may be involved, either," Lu said.
Meanwhile, Chen's opponent, Lu Kuo-hua (
"He was the justice minister, so he is supposed to know this cause-and-effect situation better than anyone else. This case has ruined his reputation ... Chen should be held responsible for this," Lu said.
The KMT legislative caucus yesterday called on Chen to drop out of the race over the alleged vote-buying.
"[Chen] has set a very bad example for the nation's democratic development and should immediately withdraw from the elections," KMT Legislator Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) said.
KMT caucus whip Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛) called on Ilan prosecutors to summon Chen and Presidential Office Secretary-General Yu Shyi-kun for questioning, claiming Chen treated more than 30,000 people to free meals between Nov. 18 and Nov. 22, including an event at which Chen was photographed with Yu and thousands of other people.
Additional reporting by Ko Shu-ling
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