The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday defended its decision to require DPP councilors to show their ballots during the elections of council speakers and deputy speakers, and said that prosecutors’ threats to investigate it were politically motivated.
“The DPP has asked its local councilors to show their ballots before putting them into the ballot box when electing speakers and vice speakers, because there have been rumors of vote-buying. Showing their ballots is a way for local councilors to be responsible and to show the public that they are ‘clean,’” DPP spokesperson Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) said. “Prosecutors should not act as accomplices for vote-buying by harassing those who show their ballots.”
Huang made the remarks in response to a Supreme Prosecutors’ Office news release that said prosecutors across the nation would watch the upcoming council speaker and vice speaker elections closely, and investigate councilors who show their ballots before putting them into the ballot box.
Photo: CNA
The news release was issued after DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) announced over the weekend that with the party having won a large number of seats in local councils, it wants as many councilors affiliated to the DPP as possible to be elected as speakers or vice speakers, and that she is asking all the party’s councilors to show their ballots during the voting process.
Tsai also said the party would sanction those who do not follow the rule.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus earlier yesterday morning lashed out at Tsai’s decision at a press conference, accusing her of having double standards, as the DPP once criticized the KMT caucus for monitoring KMT legislators’ voting on Control Yuan member nominees.
Huang defended the DPP’s decision, saying that elections of council leaders are different from that of vetting Control Yuan members.
“The DPP’s objective is to end the money politics that has long troubled local politics, and all our councilor-elects have already signed an agreement to follow the party’s decision on voting,” Huang said.
He added that prior legal verdicts have demonstrated that ballot-showing should not be considered an offense, and “prosecutors should avoid being politically manipulated, and focus on investigating vote-buying allegations.”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods