Given that the court had decided special allowances should be treated as a "substantial subsidy," there was no need for prosecutors to appeal, People First Party Legislator Lee Fu-tien (
Lee said that the ruling should be used as a precedent for other special allowance cases involving officials.
However, he said it should not apply to President Chen Shui-bian's (
"Despite similarities between special allowances and the presidential `state affairs fund,' Chen was also charged with using fake receipts to seek reimbursement from the fund," Lee said.
Meanwhile, the president declined to comment on Ma's acquittal, saying the case was not over yet.
"What matters now is to present the [Democratic Progressive Party, DPP] pairing with the best chance of winning the presidential election," he said. "What we should be worried about is the party's internal problems, not outside factors."
The DPP must unite, Chen said, rather than focus on how to benefit from others' mistakes.
Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu declined to comment on whether the ruling of the district court would affect next March's presidential election, saying that reporters should ask Ma's rival, Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), for his opinion.
Wellington Koo (顧立雄), a member of first lady Wu Shu-jen's (吳淑珍) legal team, said that he would have to read the verdict before commenting on whether it would apply to Wu's case.
Wu and three former Presidential Office aides were indicted on charges of corruption for allegedly embezzling NT$14.8 million from Chen's "state affairs fund."
Upset by the verdict in Ma's case, the DPP yesterday urged prosecutors to appeal and go ahead with a second trial as soon as possible.
"We can't understand how the Taipei District Court could pronounce Ma not guilty even though the proof of his crime was beyond doubt," DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun told a press conference.
Yu said Ma had a clear motive and also clearly violated the law by wiring half of his mayoral special allowance into his personal accounts and spending the money on personal expenses.
"Justice was not served. This shows that we still have a long way to go to redress the many injustices of the past," he said.
DPP Secretary-General Lin Chia-lung (
He was referring to the case of independent Legislator Yen Chin-piao (
Elsewhere, DPP caucus whip Wang Sing-nan (
"US president [Richard] Nixon stepped down because he told lies in the Watergate scandal [in 1972] ... We want to tell Mr Ma that he is not qualified to be a presidential candidate because he also told lies [in his special allowance case]," Wang said.
When approached for comment, Taiwan Solidarity Union spokeswoman Chou Mei-li (周美里) said the party respected the court, but added that the verdict would only have a temporary influence on next year's presidential poll because voters would be more concerned about candidates' policies regarding the nation's future.
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