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.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS