With polling day only four days away, the government appeared keen yesterday to signal that the judicial system remains unaffected by election rhetoric and the campaign against vote-buying.
The nation's most senior police officer announced yesterday that the case clear-up rate is currently higher than last year, while the premier called for hoarders of rice wine to be sued.
Director-General of the National Police Administration Wang Chin-wang (
Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) also voiced his ministry's appreciation for the efforts of the more than 70,000 police officers nationwide who are involved in the effort to drive bribery out of the electoral process.
"Actually, what our police officers have done is simply to incorporate this anti-vote-buying action into their daily routines," he said. "We have not altered our normal state of alertness or priorities because of this initiative. Also, on Dec. 1, apart from regular police officers, an additional 36,000 police officers will provide security at polling stations nationwide. In the meantime, these officers are on stand-by for possible protests or violence."
"The case-handling rate for this year is 93.94 percent, another statistic which demonstrates that the police definitely have the ability to maintain law and order, even though a lot of them are also busy investigating vote-buying cases."
The police's case-handling rate for the whole of last year was 92 percent.
Wang said that police expect to make arrests soon in the high-profile kidnapping last weekend of Taoyuan County Councilor Tseng Chung-yi (曾忠義).
The police, he said, are regarding the crime as "election-related."
Tseng was kidnapped on his way home from a campaign rally in Linkou township, Taipei County, on Saturday. His kidnappers asked NT$150 million in ransom for his release.
He was released on Monday morning and his family refuses to say whether they paid the kidnappers.
In a separate announcement, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
"The ministry's National Police Administration has discovered more than 870,000 bottles of rice wine which were illegally stored," said the Minister of the Interior, Chang Po.
"We want to urge the Ministry of Justice, the National Police Administration and the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Board to work together to quickly resolve the current shortage of rice wine," said Chang.
"We want to ensure that the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Board is distributing rice wine to all local grocery stores fairly and equally."
"Also, we want to make sure that investigators catch those who are storing rice wine deliberately."
"This work should be done within a month, starting from today," Chang said.
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