Justice officials yesterday declined to answer opposition lawmakers' questions as to whether President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) remarks about vote-buying allegations in Kaohsiung during election day were illegal.
Democratic Progressive Party mayoral candidate Chen Chu's (
The next day, the president, while casting his ballot in Taipei, told the press: "In the election in Kaohsiung, there is a candidate ... suspected of being involved in vote-buying. The election would become invalid if he were elected."
Vote-buying
Chen's remarks were seen as a reference to the vote-buying allegation made by Chen Chu's camp against Huang, although the president did not name the candidate.
During a meeting at the legislature's Budgets and Final Accounts Committee yesterday, KMT lawmakers demanded that Taiwan High Court Prosecutor-General Hsieh Wen-ting (謝文定) and Vice Justice Minister Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) investigate whether the president had violated the law.
"The president broke the law with his remarks as he was trying to influence the electorate with his trumped-up charges," KMT Legislator Lin Te-fu (
Lin was referring to Article No. 92 of the Public Officials' Election and Recall Law (公職人員選舉罷免法).
KMT Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (
Lawsuit
In response, Lee said that the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office will take care of the case if a lawsuit were filed against the president.
"I am not allowed to comment on a single case. But Article No. 92 of the Public Officials' Election and Recall Law applies to all people regardless of their position," Lee said.
Hsieh said that prosecutors would decide whether the president's comment constituted an illegality on the basis of facts.
"That is not something I can answer with a yes or no here," he said.
Meanwhile, KMT lawmakers yesterday called a press conference in support of Huang who had filed a lawsuit asking for the election result in Kaohsiung to be invalidated.
KMT legislative caucus whip Tsai Chin-lung (
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