Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) said yesterday that a partial re-election of the Kaohsiung City Council would be required if more than 15 councilors are found guilty of accepting bribes in the council's speaker election.
The Kaohsiung Prosecutors Office said that more than 20 councilors are involved in the vote-buying scandal and 19 councilors were questioned by the prosecutors.
Yu yesterday cited the Law on Local Government Systems (地方自治法), which stipulates that the government would have to hold another election for the council if more than 33 percent of the seats are empty, or when 50 percent of any single constituency's seats are void.
There are 44 councilor seats on the council.
Yu was invited to the Legislative Yuan's Home and Nations Committee to report the ministry's proposals to prevent vote-buying in the future and to replace the councilors who have admitted to having been involved in the affair.
In yesterday's committee meeting, how to handle the newly elected Chu An-hsiung's (朱安雄) speakership sparked a quarrel between the ministry and the Central Election Commission.
Huang Shih-cheng (黃石城), chairman of the Central Election Commission, told the committee that the council's speaker and vice-speaker elections' results can be annulled by the Cabinet if the Cabinet considers the results illegitimate.
Yu said that the ministry does not have the authority to determine whether the election is legitimate.
Lin Mei-chu (林美珠), director of the ministry's Civil Affairs Department, said that the regulations only entitle the central government "to grant election certificates" to the council's speakers and vice speaker, but the central government is not authorized to "evaluate" issues connected with a local government's autonomy.
"We have to wait for the court's final judgments," Yu said.
Yu said that the ministry's first step would be to cooperate with the Ministry of Justice on the amendment to the Election and Recall Law (
According to the MOI's proposal, if the elected councilor is found guilty of vote-buying, the government would replace the councilor with those candidates who received the highest tally. Also, political parties would be fined NT$500,000 to NT$5 million if their members were involved in a vote-buying case.
As the public worries about the slow process of the courts, and how such circumstances could allow corrupt councilors to complete their four-year term, PFP lawmaker Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) yesterday called on the Judicial Yuan to speed up its deliberations.
The Judicial Yuan is still reviewing vote-buying scandals from 1994.
Lee and the MOI, meanwhile, reached an agreement to replace speakers or vice speakers if they are found guilty of vote-buying in the first trial by amending the current regulations, which states that speakers and vice speakers can only be replaced after a guilty verdict has been reached in a final trial.
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