■ Politics
No more poll results
Starting from today, no one will be allowed to publish survey results on the March 20 election prior to the poll, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said yesterday. Officials said violators will be fined between NT$500,000 and NT$5 million (US$15,060 to US$150,600). According to Article 52 of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Law (總統副總統選舉罷免法), no political parties or other organizations or individuals can publish survey results about presidential candidates or an election in the 10-day period ahead of an election. They also cannot report, distribute, comment or quote such survey results. Even poll results published prior to the 10-day period cannot be quoted in the 10 days before an election. The commission reminder comes at a time when the latest polls have shown President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Chinese Nationalist Party Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) running in a dead heat.
■ Election
Officers get voting leeway
Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) said at the Legislative Yuan yesterday that police officers who have been assigned to cover the presidential election in areas which they are not registered to vote in should still be able to vote in their assigned areas. There are approximately 13,800 police officers who have been assigned to areas they are not registered in. Yu said that the officers would need to file applications in advance to take advantage of the new ruling.
■ Immigration
MOI clarifies visa rule
The Ministry of the Interior announced yesterday that Chinese spouses who have filed for permanent residency under the old system do not have to renew their applications under the new system. About 53,000 applicants have been affected by the new policy. On March 1, the ministry said that all Chinese spouses applying for permanent residency need to provide proof of financial stability. Those who have already obtained unification visas and plan on staying in the country should present their physical checkup results and police criminal records to get visa extensions.
■ Immigration
Smart women seized
Coast guard officers seized three well-educated female illegal Chinese immigrants in Chiayi yesterday, all of whom claimed they were tricked into coming to Taiwan to work as prostitutes. The three women, surnamed Yu, Lin and Liu, were seized at a sex joint disguised as an automobile maintenance shop. During questioning, the trio told coast guard officers that they had been tricked, claiming that they didn't know before coming to Taiwan late last year that they would be forced to work as prostitutes upon their arrival. They said they felt a sense of liberation when they were seized by law enforcement authorities. Yu is a junior college graduate, while Lin graduated from Sichuan Normal University and once taught at a school in China, and Liu was a senior student at Anhui Normal University. The trio will be sent to a detention center for illegal Chinese immigrants and will be repatriated at a later date, coast guard officers said. Meanwhile, the officers said, the sex joint's operator and a bodyguard at the shop were also arrested in the pre-dawn raid.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
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