Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) office yesterday urged Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to publicize details of electoral donations his campaign has received.
Lee Ying-yuan (李應元), chief executive officer of Hsieh's campaign, told a press conference that Hsieh wanted the presidential campaign to be conducted in a transparent manner.
As a result, Hsieh has been cooperating with judicial probes in cases centering on his special allowance and political donations, Lee said.
PHOTO: CNA
"We hope both sides [Ma and Hsieh's campaigns] can face judicial procedures honestly and show the public that we are applying the same standard to ourselves as we apply to our opponent," Lee said.
"Therefore, we urge Ma's office to make public the sources of the donations he received during his terms as Taipei mayor and during his election campaigns and show how the money was spent," Lee said.
Lee made the remarks at the news conference after Hsieh had a meeting with Special Investigation Section Prosecutor Chou Chih-jung (周志榮) of the Supreme Court Prosecutors Office at Chou's office on Friday.
Donations
Hsieh allegedly accepted large political donations from a group of construction companies during his term as Kaohsiung mayor in 2002.
Kaohsiung Prosecutor Lo Chien-hsun (羅建勛) alleged last year the companies made donations to Hsieh during the bidding for Kaohsiung's MRT construction project.
After making the donations, the companies had all been accepted as MRT contractors, he said.
On Friday, Hsieh said that all the donors summoned by prosecutors as witnesses in the case had told prosecutors they had made the donations in order to support his election campaign and not to curry favor in the selection process for MRT contractors.
Lee urged the media, political talk shows and newspapers not to make "groundless defamatory comments" against Hsieh.
Hsieh's camp had assembled a group of lawyers to take immediate action to "safeguard Hsieh's basic human rights and reputation," Lee said.
In response to the request by Hsieh's camp, Ma yesterday urged Hsieh "not to drag others into his corruption scandals."
"Hsieh should face the charges with courage and explain himself to the prosecutors, rather than involving other people in his case," Ma said.
Shrugging off the remarks by Hsieh's office, Ma campaign spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (
Lo also urged the Hsieh campaign not to try to shift the focus away from the corruption issues that Hsieh faces.
"Hsieh should make his own accounts public before asking others to do so," Lo said.
Additional reporting by Mo Yan-chih
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
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
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