Two DPP legislators deliberately rendered their votes invalid during the election for vice speaker last Friday, according to DPP lawmaker Chou Po-lun (
Two of the votes in the first round of voting were blotted with an ink pad and were cast by DPP lawmakers, Chou said.
Hong Chi-chang (
Chou was a member of Hong's campaign team.
Disputes have been raging in the DPP since the election about whether any of the party's lawmakers betrayed their party in the ballot.
Unconfirmed rumors have suggested that some DPP lawmakers received money from the KMT in return for casting invalid votes, thereby reducing Hong's chances.
According to Chou, Hong should have come much closer to an outright majority in the first round because the DPP had already struck deals with six independent lawmakers and three opposition lawmakers to vote for Hong. Four of the ballots cast for Hong were blotted with ink, however and declared invalid, Chou said.
Chou said that two of the four ballots had been deliberately blotted.
Chou yesterday called on the DPP's party headquarters to identify the two turncoats by looking into the Legislative Yuan's video records and checking which lawmakers failed to clearly show their ballots before casting them.
It is illegal for lawmakers to show their votes during a secret ballot, which was the method used for the speaker and vice-speaker elections.
However, both the KMT and the DPP arranged for "technical display" of ballots by getting their lawmakers to watch one another while lining up to vote, or by appointing some lawmakers as monitors to take a peek at their colleagues' ballots.
Some DPP members have raised suspicions about Chiu Chang (邱彰), a female legislator-at-large who refused to show her ballot to her colleague Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩).
The two women had an argument on the legislature's floor as a result.
The DPP's Central Standing Committee has already decided to ask the party's Central Review Committee for an investigation into the case.
But Hsu Jung-shu (許榮淑), head of the committee, said that the monitor's failure to see Chiu Chang's ballot was due to the monitor's incompetence.
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