Judicial authorities have no right to censure the campaign platforms of election candidates, the DPP said yesterday.
Hualien prosecutors have summoned a number of senior DPP officials including the party's deputy secretary-general, Lee Chin-yung (
The prosecutors maintain that the party's election promises, specifically one in which the DPP said that, were its candidate elected, they would introduce a monthly allowance of NT$5,000 to the county's Aboriginal leaders, constitute a form of vote-buying.
The DPP argues on the other hand that to classify election promises as vote-buying would interfere with both the right of free speech and the practice of democracy. The party has called the action by the Hualien District Prosecutors' Office unconstitutional.
DPP Deputy Secretary-General Lee Ying-yuan (
"In the past when Taiwan hadn't complete democracy, many ideas and polices were put forward in election campaigns, because these allowed relatively more freedom for candidates to express ideas, " Lee Ying-yuan said.
"Yet now that we have complete democracy, the judicial authorities come forward to inspect and censure the candidates' campaign platforms. It's a total retrogression of the democratization process," Lee Ying-yuan said.
He cited an interpretation of the Constitution by the Council of Grand Justices, according to which "any political issues or actions of government should be resolved by executive agencies or the legislature as laid out in the Constitution and it is deemed inappropriate for the judicial agencies to interfere."
"The judicial authorities should keep out of politics," he said.
Citing a similar situation in the US where the judicial investigation authorities could not investigate an administrative policy or campaign promise, Lee said the value of such a practice is what any democratic country, including Taiwan should understand and respect.
Before setting off to Hualien to answer prosecutors' questions yesterday, Lee Chin-yung denounced the Hualien prosecutors as handling the case in a less than objective manner.
Lee Chin-yung said that former Taiwan Provincial Governor James Soong (
In addition, seven of the former candidates in Hualien running for the county councilorships in 1998 and last year proposed similar allowances or bonuses to aboriginal communities. Their campaign platforms never became a legal issue.
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