Keelung City Council Speaker Huang Ching-tai (黃景泰) began a hunger strike on Monday to protest a court decision to keep him in detention on suspicion of violating the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) and to prevent him from taking part in campaign activities in his bid to become Keelung mayor.
The hunger strike was announced by Huang’s lawyer, Chen Ming-hui (陳明暉), at a news conference late on Monday after Chen met with his client at the detention center earlier that day.
Huang, who has been detained since Sept. 5 on corruption charges, is running for mayor despite running afoul of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which canceled its nomination of the 48-year-old after a probe was launched.
Huang’s campaign headquarters filed a request on Nov. 11 with the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office to allow Huang to participate in a policy platform public hearing on Thursday last week, but the court rejected the request, Chen said, adding that Huang would also have no chance to attend a second hearing scheduled for yesterday.
Huang “deeply regrets” the court decision and decided to go on a hunger strike to protest what he described as the court’s unfair treatment of his campaign, the lawyer said.
Keelung Prosecutors’ Office spokesman Chou Chi-yung (周啟勇) said that Huang’s detention is based on legal procedure.
Although political participation is one of the public’s basic rights, the right must be restricted when a person is under detention, Chou said.
The court said that several witnesses have testified that Huang and “other accomplices” misappropriated city council property worth more than NT$10 million (US$323,500) and used the illicit gains to buy designer bags and savings insurance policies.
After Huang refused to quit the race for mayor, the KMT nominated former National Immigration Agency director-general Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功) to run against Huang. The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) candidate is Lin Yu-chang (林右昌), a former DPP deputy secretary-general.
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