Two Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members in central Taiwan were found guilty earlier this week of election law violations linked to vote buying in the run-up to the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 29, 2014, in which they won their races.
The Taichung Branch of Taiwan High Court on Wednesday ruled that Yang Jung-chang (楊永昌) had given consent to and knew about the disbursement of cash by four friends and relatives to buy votes from Taichung residents during the campaign for the elections, when he was seeking a seat on the Taichung City Council.
The court ruling said the four handed out cash to residents, either NT$500 or NT$1,000 per person, in exchange for voting for Yang. The four each received three-year suspended sentences and were ordered to make charitable donations of between NT$80,000 and NT$20,000.
The court rejected the defendants’ claims that they had acted on their own in support of Yang’s campaign, citing evidence and the testimony of a witness who said one of the defendants told him: “I will give you NT$1,000 from Yang Jung-chang.”
The witness also testified that NT$5,000 in cash was handed out to five eligible voters at his home.
“It is very disappointing, I feel dejected over the court’s ruling,” Yang said after hearing of the ruling.
As the High Court decision was final, the Taichung City Council issued a statement declaring Yang’s election was nullified, and the vacant seat would be filled by Lin Shu-cheng (林素貞), an independent candidate who garnered the next highest number of votes in that constituency.
However, Yang said he would maintain a constituency service office to provide for the needs of local communities.
The Changhua District Court on Tuesday found former Tienwei Township (田尾) mayor Lin Wen-hua (林文華) guilty of providing up to NT$30,000 in cash to several borough wardens in the Changhua County township to hand out to area voters.
Lin was sentenced to 54 month in prison and the loss of his civil rights for four years, although the ruling can still be appealed.
He had already been stripped of the post after a civil court in November last year nullified the election results.
He had said the money was not for buying votes, but was wages for the borough wardens who had helped provide guidance for neighborhood visits. He said he had needed their help because he was not familiar with the small access roads leading to residents’ houses.
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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