Yunlin Prosecutors’ Office detained a borough warden yesterday on suspicion of buying votes for a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate for the Yunlin legislative by-election on Saturday.
Prosecutors and investigators said they have questioned 18 people, including Dounan Township (斗南) warden and borough wardens.
Office spokesman Chiang Te-lung (蔣得龍) said 11 borough wardens admitted that they each had received NT$1,000 to support the KMT candidate Chang Ken-hui (張艮輝), a professor at Yunlin Technology University, and one person was detained after questioning.
Chang’s campaign office has denied the allegation, saying that Chang would resign or not take up the seat if he were to be elected and the allegation proved true.
The incident also sparked political infighting in the KMT as Chang’s office fingered his rival, independent candidate Chang Hui-yuan (張輝元), as the mastermind behind the smear campaign.
Chang Hui-yuan’s son, former KMT legislator Chang Sho-wen (張碩文), challenged Chang Ken-hui’s camp to take them to court and threatened to sue them if they did.
The by-election has been called to fill the seat left vacant by Chang Sho-wen, who won the seat in January last year, but lost it earlier this month after the High Court found him guilty of participating in a vote-buying scheme organized by his father.
Chang Hui-yuan, who was found guilty of vote buying in the first trial, registered with the KMT to run in the by-election on behalf of his son earlier this month.
The KMT later rejected his registration based on the revised version of its “black-gold exclusion clause,” which states that party members who are found guilty of corruption in their first trial cannot to be nominated for any election.
Meanwhile, the KMT said yesterday it would discuss the party’s candidate for the Nantou legislative by-election at a meeting today.
The seat had been held by Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), who became premier on Sept. 10. The Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) states that a by-election must be held within three months, or in this case before Dec. 10.
As the local elections are scheduled for Dec. 20, the KMT said it hoped to see the Nantou legislative by-election held in tandem with the local elections. But it said the decision would have to be made by the Central Election Commission.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
A 23-year-old Taichung man vowed to drink more water after his heavy consumption of sugary tea landed him in hospital with a kidney infection and sepsis. The man, surnamed Lin (林), used to drink two cups of half-sugar oolong tea while working at a food stall, where he often had to wait a long time before urinating. Lin developed kidney stones and noticed blood in his urine, but ignored the issue after taking medication for three days. A month later, he went to the emergency room after experiencing a recurring fever and was diagnosed with a kidney infection that led to sepsis, landing