A number of politicians in the south are facing convictions or indictments that threaten their careers in public office.
Taitung County Council head of personnel Chen Kun-chih (陳坤池) on Monday said that independent councilor Chang Shun-cheng (張順成) would be removed from his post once the council receives the Ministry of the Interior’s formal notification of the verdict in a case of alleged vote buying.
The ministry has received the Supreme Court’s ruling to reject Chang’s appeal against a guilty verdict rendered by a lower court, making the lower court’s ruling final, Chen said.
Chang, a retired police officer, was sentenced to three years and two months in prison and his wife three years and three months for paying NT$2,000 (US$61.10) per vote during a by-election in November 2012.
He lost the seat after prosecutors indicted him on vote-buying charges, but he managed to win the seat again in local elections in November last year.
The Taitung County Election Commission said a by-election for Chang’s seat would be held once it is formally notified of the ruling.
Meanwhile, the Pingtung District Court invalidated the election of independent Pingtung County Councilor Lu Wen-jui (盧文瑞) over his alleged involvement in a joint vote-buying campaign during last year’s elections.
Lu, who was accused of joining with two other candidates and paying NT$2,000 per voter, denied the allegation and said he would appeal the court’s ruling.
Also in Pingtung, prosecutors indicted Mudan Township (牡丹) Mayor Chen Ying-ming (陳英銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly taking kickbacks from contractors totaling NT$22.13 million.
Chen, who had been detained since early October, was released on NT$300,000 bail after the indictment was handed down.
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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