The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a guilty verdict against former Tainan City Council speaker Lee Chuan-chiao (李全教) on vote-buying charges.
It sentenced him to a reduced term of three years and six months in prison, and deprived him of his civic rights for five years.
The ruling can be appealed.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politician had hoped a lower court ruling from April last year that stripped him of his council speaker position would be overturned.
In yesterday’s ruling, the High Court found Lee guilty of buying votes during the council speaker election in December 2014 in violation of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
An investigation found that Lee, through intermediaries, offered up to NT$10 million (US$324,928 at the current exchange rate) per vote to seven city councilors in exchange for their support in the election.
Lee decried the High Court’s ruling as “political persecution” as he led a group of supporters in a demonstration outside the court.
Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) said: “Lee’s vote-buying case had a big impact on Tainan. It led to changes in election laws and paved the way for registered balloting in council speaker elections. Thus we have opened up to let the sun shine on to the political process. The reform of ‘black gold’ politics has been completed. We will let the judiciary deal with vote-buying cases.”
Lee had previously been convicted of vote buying in a separate case. The High Court in August last year found him guilty of vote buying during the campaign for the Tainan city council election in November 2014.
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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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