After obtaining statements from individuals relating to the vote buying scandal involving the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Kaohsiung mayoral candidate's camp, prosecutors yesterday said they were still looking for the mastermind behind the scheme.
"Although the evidence we have does not show that either the KMT Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Huang Chun-ying (黃俊英) camp or the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Chen Chu (陳菊) camp were involved in the vote buying scandal, we believe there are other suspects out there whom we have yet to identify," Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office spokesman Chung Chung-hsiao (鍾忠孝) said during a press conference yesterday.
Huang's camp accused the Chen camp of fabricating the vote-buying incident by ordering a couple of individuals from Chen's camp to do so in an attempt to discredit Huang and his camp.
But Chung said prosecutors had by now "almost proved" that the incident had nothing to do Chens' camp.
Chung said that Ku Hsin-ming (古鋅酩), who rented two buses to transport Huang's supporters to his election-eve rally on Dec. 8 , admitted paying voters NT$500 (US$15) to vote for Huang. He said that in total he had spent NT$60,000 for the bribes and the bus rental.
Ku told prosecutors that two men, Su Wan-chi (
Su and Yang were both arrested after Ku delivered himself to the authorities.
Su and Yang said they supported Huang's campaign and belonged to the Kaohsiung Yunlin Association.
Chung said prosecutors were wondering why Ku would use his own money for the bribes and suspected someone had given him the money to do so.
Ku has been detained for further questioning.
Late on Dec. 8, Chen's campaign team held a press conference saying that five young DPP volunteers who pretended to be Huang supporters had seen Ku give NT$500 to passengers on a bus, instructing them to vote for Huang.
Huang immediately said that his DPP rival was resorting to "dirty tricks" and was trying to besmirch him on the eve of the election by accusing him of involvement in vote-buying.
Prosecutors identified Ku and the passengers after examining a videotape released by Chen's campaign team.
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