Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) yesterday accused Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) vice presidential candidate Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) of breaking the law.
Showing photographs of two detached mansions in a vacant lot, Chiu accused Su of violating rules governing the use of farmland which stipulate that the percentage of a plot of agricultural land used for houses should not exceed 10 percent.
Chiu made the allegations during a question-and-answer session at the legislature.
According to Chiu, construction permits for the two mansions located in the Changchih Township (長治), Pingtung County, where Su Jia-chyuan’s family and that of his sister-in-law live, were awarded in 2003 when Su Jia-chyuan was county commissioner.
By using the farmland to build the mansions Su had violated the “Regulations Governing Agricultural Dwelling Houses” (農業用地興建農舍辦法), established to ensure that farmland is used for agricultural purposes, Chiu said.
Although the issuance of such permits was within the sphere of local governments’ statutory authority, it was a violation of conflict-of-interest rules that Pingtung County Government approved the projects, Chiu added.
Chiu asked Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and the Executive Yuan to look into possible negligence on the part of Pingtung County Commissioner Tsao Chi-hung (曹啟鴻), who Chiu claimed said in 2007 that the local government would raze the mansions, but had so far failed to do so.
Chiu also accused Su Chia-fu (蘇嘉富), Su Jia-chyuan’s older brother, of involvement in the illegally mined sand and gravel businesses, citing a statement made by the older Su in a case he brought against Chiu in 2008, a case in which prosecutors decided not to indict Chiu.
In the statement Su Chia-fu told prosecutors that he sometimes played the role of intermediary between buyers and the sand and gravel mining industry and that police turned a blind eye to truck drivers suspected of transporting illegally mined sand and gravel when they learned that they were working with Su Chia-fu when Su Jia-chyuan was commissioner, Chiu said.
Chiu also alleged that Su Jia-chyuan’s wife, Hung Heng-chu (洪恆珠), a public servant, accompanied him on electioneering on Tuesday during working hours.
In response, DPP campaign office spokesperson Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) said the allegations were all untrue.
“The integrity of Su Jia-chyuan has been tried and tested in many elections. The DPP will not dance to Chiu’s tune,” Hsu said, adding that Su Jia-chyuan had obtained legitimate permits to build his house and Hung had taken a day off on Tuesday.
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