Prosecutor-General Yen Ta-ho (顏大和) yesterday said that more than 4,000 allegations of electoral irregularities had been reported to law enforcement agencies of Tuesday, adding that 10,041 people are now under investigation.
Those figures are up from the 3,651 cases involving 8,930 people that had been reported as of Friday.
Chinese-language media and pundits have said that Saturday’s nine-in-one elections have spurred more cases of vote-buying, campaign violence and fraud by candidates than all previous polls.
“In this election, most of reports of vote-buying are from rural areas; there are fewer from the cities,” Yen said. “In our experience, when it comes down to a close race to the finish, we can expect more incidents of vote-buying.”
He urged the public to stand up for fair elections by reporting suspected vote-buying and other irregularities to a toll-free hotline: 0800-024-099.
According to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, as of noon on Tuesday, 4,086 cases of alleged electoral malfeasance were under investigation nationwide — 2,960 cases of alleged vote-buying involving 6,919 people; 169 claims of election violence involving 275; and 957 reports of other irregularities involving 2,847. Indictments were handed down to 121 people in 42 cases.
Ministry of the Interior officials said they will mobilize 16,124 police officers to safeguard 15,559 polling stations nationwide on Saturday. The officers will be assisted by 24,251 community workers and civilian volunteers, the officials said.
In related news, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supporters yesterday organized a protest in front of the Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office to back demands that KMT Pingtung County Headquarters director Chang Ya-ping (張雅屏) be released.
Chang is being detained incommunicado over allegations relating to the production and distribution of smear campaign brochures.
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