Tainan authorities have launched an investigation into vote-buying allegations involving a legislative candidate from the Taiwan People’s Communist Party (TPCP).
The party is accused of receiving money from China to buy votes in Taiwan.
Prosecutors coordinating with police and Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau officials raided four locations in the city on Monday, including the candidate’s and the party’s offices.
They also summoned for questioning 45 people who took part in a junket to China early last month. Prosecutors summoned more people yesterday, increasing the number of people questioned to more than 60.
Tainan Deputy Chief Prosecutor Lin Chung-pin (林仲斌) said suspects would be charged with contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法) and provisions of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
Regarded as a fringe political party based in Tainan’s Sinying District (新營), the TPCP was founded in 2016 by Lin Te-wang (林德旺), a Taiwanese who had operated a business in China. Lin had been a high-ranking member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Lin, the TPCP chairman, is suspected of channeling money from China, arranging junkets for Tainan residents and funding a candidate running on a pro-China platform in Saturday next week’s elections, contesting a legislative seat in Tainan’s first electoral district, Lin Chung-pin said.
The prosecutors had conducted a preliminary investigation based on tip-offs, and found that Lin Te-wang had conduits to transfer money from China, allegedly to buy votes.
He allegedly took some Tainan residents to Jiangsu Province, China, and the participants were asked to vote for the party’s candidate in exchange for the trip, the prosecutors said.
“The trips were affiliated with TPCP and its connections in China. Four such trips were made since August [last year], whose participants varied from 20 to 40 people... Investigations showed that overall about 100 people participated in the eight-day group tour,” Lin Chung-pin said.
Lin Te-wang also took part in the trips, and the participants were treated to banquets and gifts by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office officials and other Chinese government figures as they toured several cities in the province, investigators said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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