Hualien County chief prosecutor Hsu Chien-jung (許建榮) yesterday said his office has received more than 100 reported cases of alleged vote-buying and other election irregularities, and already two individuals were charged with violating the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
Siulin Township (秀林) had the most cases, with one prominent case in the spotlight this week.
Tseng Mei-ying (曾美英), head of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Siulin branch, is being held incommunicado after being detained on Thursday. According to the Hualien District Prosecutors’ Office, Tseng allegedly sent amounts from NT$1,000 to NT$5,000 by mail to eligible voters and households in Hsiulin.
Tseng’s mail allegedly instructed recipients to vote for Huang Hui-pao (黃輝寶), KMT candidate for Siulin township’s chief position, and other KMT councilors.
Prosecutors said 11 individuals reported receiving such mail from Tseng. Some of those questioned admitted receiving the money in exchange for voting for KMT candidates as requested, according to prosecutors, who have recovered NT$6,000 so far.
Tseng denied having sent money in exchange for voting for particular party candidates.
Given that several alleged accomplices are still at large, prosecutors applied to the court to detain Tseng in order to prevent collusion and destruction of evidence.
Meanwhile, Greater Kaohsiung prosecutors said three vote-buying cases are under investigation, for a total of five through the past month and had three individuals detained on charges. They said that as of Thursday, they had received 308 complaints and reports of election irregularities.
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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