Three Miaoli County councilors were stripped of their seats when the Taichung branch of the High Court on Wednesday upheld their guilty convictions for vote-buying.
The guilty councilors are Chang Chih-yu (張志宇) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Hsu Ying-ping (許櫻萍) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Lu Ming-liang (呂明亮), an independent.
As of yesterday, only Lu had issued a statement in response, in which he said the judicial system was flawed, the court’s decision was unfair and the nation’s legal system should be reformed.
The High Court found vote brokers and campaign staff working for Lu, Chang and Hsu paid eligible voters between NT$500 and NT$1,000 in return for their support at the ballot box.
As the three councilors were from the same constituency, under Central Election Committee regulations, their seats are to be taken by the three candidates receiving the fourth, fifth and sixth-highest number of votes in 2014’s nine-in-one elections.
The political affiliation of the council will undergo no substantial change, since the three new councilors happen to be a KMT member, a DPP member and an independent.
As of the end of last year, the Miaoli District Prosecutors’ Office had convicted 14 elected representatives on vote-buying charges connected with the nine-in-one elections.
Of these, six have exhausted all their legal options and had their seats stripped, while appeals are under way in the other eight cases.
Of the guilty verdicts, six were for KMT politicians and eight for independents.
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