The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday said that Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) contravened election laws by treating residents to a banquet and demanded that prosecutors investigate.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) mayor said that the KMT got its facts wrong, as the banquet was organized by local supporter groups and not by his office.
The banquet took place on July 21 on Lishan (梨山) in the Central Mountain Range, said KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) and Wu Huang-sheng (吳皇昇), spokesman for KMT Taichung mayoral candidate Lu Shiow-yen’s (盧秀燕) campaign office.
Photo: Chang Ching-ya, Taipei Times
Video showed about 300 guests at the event, a “lavish” banquet with meat, seafood and other dishes that was held to solicit votes for Lin, Wu said.
“It was a free banquet. There were election banners and attendants wearing hats and vests urging people to vote for Lin,” Wu said.
Lin addressed the audience and brought many top city officials to canvass for votes, Wang said, accusing Lin of misappropriating taxpayer money and government resources for personal gain.
“The event was definitely held to buy votes. It contravened provisions of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), which caps the value of a gift candidates can give to voters at NT$30,” Wang said.
Lin rejected the accusations, saying that people would see KMT officials as a joke if they keep attacking their opponents with false information.
“The banquet was organized by private organizations and groups that are backing me for re-election. Such groups have always sponsored events to express their support for certain candidates,” Lin said. “The event’s funding came from these groups and other private sources.”
The KMT has a tradition of putting on lavish banquets and using public funds to distribute campaign gifts, Taichung City Government spokesman Cho Kuan-ting (卓冠廷) said.
“Just because the KMT is so firmly fixed in their ways does not mean they should accuse others of doing such things,” Cho said. “Lu Shiow-yen as the KMT candidate should not resort to mudslinging. It is not what Taichung voters want to see.”
The banquet was a private function organized by supporter groups, which invited Lin and some city officials as guests, Cho said, adding that most attendees were members of these groups and the event was not open to everyone.
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