Minister of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) said yesterday that 40,000 police and 29,000 volunteers would be on duty to ensure that voting and vote counting on Saturday proceed smoothly.
"The legislative election on Jan. 12 will be a working day for all police officers across the nation," Lee said at a press conference held after yesterday's Cabinet meeting.
Lee said police agencies in counties and cities had made necessary preparations to ensure the security of voters and the safe transportation of ballots, adding they would prevent anybody from interfering in the process, maintain order at polling stations and stop crowds from causing trouble.
The National Police Agency (NPA) said it had looked into several hundreds of people connected with gangsters who were possibly intending to interfere with the election and that approximately 132 legislative candidates had applied for personal protection from the NPA, Lee said.
At the press conference, Minister of Justice Morley Shih (施茂林) said the number of reported vote-buying cases related to the legislative election exceeded 5,669 and involved more than 10,323 people, both record highs.
Among the reported vote-buying cases, two had been resolved and 14 people had been indicted by prosecutors, Shih said, adding that accelerating the pace of investigations into vote-buying cases would be a future deterrent.
"Previously, the task of cracking down on vote-buying would stop on the eve of election day, but this year we will extend the task to election day. Election day is expected to be a peak period for vote-buying. We will also be on the lookout for how gambling influences the election," Shih said.
Officials with the affected ministries briefed Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) on their preparations for Saturday's poll at yesterday's Cabinet meeting.
The National Information and Communication Security Taskforce presented a report to the Cabinet saying the Central Election Commission (CEC) had set up a vote-counting system independent of the Internet to ensure that vote counting would be secure.
The CEC said last week that its Web site had been hacked on two occasions, in October and last month. The two incidents did no damage to its computer systems, it said.
“China is preparing to invade Taiwan,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an exclusive interview with British media channel Sky News for a special report titled, “Is Taiwan ready for a Chinese invasion?” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said today in a statement. The 25-minute-long special report by Helen Ann-Smith released yesterday saw Sky News travel to Penghu, Taoyuan and Taipei to discuss the possibility of a Chinese invasion and how Taiwan is preparing for an attack. The film observed emergency response drills, interviewed baseball fans at the Taipei Dome on their views of US President
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