More than 100 people have been detained on suspicion of vote buying ahead of Taiwan’s five special municipality elections and local elections today, according to the Ministry of Justice.
The ministry’s statistics showed that 130 people had so far been detained ahead of today’s “three-in-one” elections, for five city mayors, 314 city councilors and thousands of ward chiefs.
Of the detainees, 78 were suspected of trying to buy votes for ward chief candidates, while 52 were suspected of acting on behalf of city councilor candidates as of Thursday, according to the statistics.
The ministry said that 2,795 cases of alleged vote-buying had been reported during the current election campaign and 35 suspects in 11 cases had been prosecuted as of Thursday.
The figures suggest that vote-buying is still rampant in Taiwan, especially in local elections, despite all the political parties, including the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), condemning such behavior.
However, the phenomenon had been widely anticipated with the total number of city councilors being reduced following the merger or upgrading of eight cities and counties into five expanded special municipalities. Vote buying has also long been commonplace in grassroots-level elections in Taiwan.
The ministry has made the crackdown on vote buying one of its top priorities. Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) also asked the ministry last week to step up efforts to uncover instances of vote buying.
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