The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday made a final appeal for support for their respective candidates in the Yunlin County legislative by-election today.
The KMT called on pan-blue supporters to centralize support and focus on the party's candidate, Chang Ken-hui (張艮輝), to prevent a split in the pan-blue vote.
Chang, a professor at Yunlin Technology University, faces a tough battle with independent candidate Chang Hui-yuan (張輝元), who left the KMT to run in the by-election after the party rejected his application to join the party primary because he had been found guilty of vote-buying in a first trial.
Hsu Su-po (許舒博), the director of the KMT's Yunlin branch, said the party had mobilized all local networks to focus its campaign on Chang Ken-hui's clean image and promote him as the “only choice in the pan-blue camp” to prevent a split in the vote.
Chang Ken-hui will very likely win the by-election if Chang Hui-yuan received less than 20,000 votes, he said.
The KMT said preventing a pan-blue split was the only strategy to win the by-election, as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國) enjoys good support in Douliou City (斗六), the largest voting district in Yunlin County.
The by-election is being held to fill the seat left vacant by Chang Hui-yuan's son, Chang Sho-wen (張碩文), who won the seat in January last year but forfeited it this year after the High Court found him guilty of being part of a vote-buying scheme organized by his father.
Chang Hui-yuan's camp has accused Chang Ken-hui of vote-buying. Prosecutors and investigators said on Sunday they had questioned 18 borough wardens, with 11 admitting that they had received NT$1,000 apiece to support the KMT candidate.
Chang Ken-hui's campaign office has denied the allegation, saying that Chang would resign or not take up the seat if he were elected and the allegation proved true.
Meanwhile, Liu visited a temple yesterday morning, asking the deity for “justice” and for him to win the election.
Liu said he had asked for justice because Chang Hui-yuan had run newspaper ads accusing him of being connected to the local triad.
Liu later went to the prosecutors' office to file a slander suit against Chang Hui-yuan.
“I didn't say anything when they first made the accusation because I wanted to make this by-election one that's free of a war of words,” he said.
“However, I'm afraid that my supporters may lose confidence if I keep tolerating these false accusations,” Liu said. “That is why I'm trying to set everything straight through the judiciary.”
Accompanied by DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Liu made a campaign tour around Douliou in the afternoon. Tsai urged voters to put in maximum effort to help Liu get elected to add a little balance to the overwhelming KMT majority in the legislature.
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