The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday showed documents that it said proved the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was lying when it dismissed DPP allegations that it plans to illegally mobilize people to cast votes in the Jan. 14 presidential and legislative elections.
Citing documents obtained from the KMT, DPP spokesperson Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) told a press conference that the minutes of a KMT campaign promotion showed that it asked party members “to form task forces to mobilize households to cast their votes on Jan. 14.”
“If the plan was an old project from four years ago as the KMT claimed, why did it write ‘Jan. 14’ on it — which is the date of this year’s poll?” Chen asked.
On Friday, the DPP said the KMT was planning the illegal mobilization of voters on the day of the elections by providing transportation services and mobilizing voters via text messages and telephone calls in a systematic, nationwide project codenamed “Blue Eagle.”
At the time, KMT Culture and Communication Committee director Chuang Po-chun (莊伯仲) rebutted the accusation by saying that the “Blue Eagle” plan was the name of a KMT project four years ago that mobilized party members to cast their votes in the 2008 presidential election.
Chen yesterday also showed a photo he said was taken on Dec. 6, when the KMT was holding an election-related seminar in Greater Kaohsiung’s Nanzih (楠梓) and Zuoying (左營) districts. Saying that there was a red banner hanging in the background in the picture reading, “Blue Eagle Plan Seminar,” Chen added that it suggested the “Blue Eagle” project still existed.
“Chuang was lying to the public,” Chen said.
DPP spokesperson Kang Yu-cheng (康裕成) said the KMT plan was to form a 10-member task force in every polling district to mobilize people to vote, adding that it said in the KMT document: “If it rains on election day, or for handicapped voters, [task force members] can take voters to polling stations by scooter” and that “if they know of supporters who have not yet cast their votes, please go to their homes and urge them to vote.”
Saying it is a nationwide, large-scale and organized illegal action, which could be a violation of election laws, Chen added that the DPP would file charges with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division against the KMT over the case.
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:
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