All 34 defendants indicted by Taichung prosecutors for allegedly forging up to 72.88 percent of signatures in two recall petitions against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators pleaded guilty at the first court hearing yesterday.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taichung chapter secretary-general Chen Chien-feng (陳劍鋒) and executive director Wu Kang-lung (伍康龍) were among those indicted.
Charges include document forgery under the Criminal Code (刑法) and contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) for illegal use of private information by a non-government entity.
Photo: Chen Chien-chih, Taipei Times
Wu, Chen and two additional party workers were also charged under the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) with forging or misusing personal information to falsify recall petitions.
During the hearing, Wu and Chen’s lawyers relayed their confessions to the court, seeking more lenient sentencing. The defendants acted in response to demands from KMT headquarters, and under social and political pressure to meet targets in a short timeframe, they said.
The indictment said the Taichung City Election Commission investigated the first recall petition of 2,360 signatures targeting DPP Legislator Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), adding that while the petition surpassed the 2,235 signature threshold, it was later found that only 640 signatures were genuine and 1,720 were forged, yielding a falsification rate of 72.88 percent.
Meanwhile, the petition against DPP Legislator Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) collected 3,513 signatures, above the 3,297 threshold, but only 975 signatures were real, while 2,538 were forged, giving a falsification rate of 72.25 percent, the indictment said.
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