Former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said yesterday he would sue Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) for slander after he said Hsieh fabricated a tape in 1998 accusing his rival in that year’s Kaohsiung mayoral election of having an affair.
Hsieh ran full-page ads in newspapers yesterday rebutting the claim and later held a press conference.
Hsieh said Kaohsiung prosecutors had recently decided not to indict him under the Election and Recall Act for Public Servants (公職人員選舉罷免法) in a case that his rival in the mayoral election, Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), had filed over the tape incident.
“I passed a lie detector test during the [investigation]. In the three-hour test I did not tell one lie,” Hsieh said.
He said Chiu and two other political commentators needed to provide evidence proving he was behind the tape or he would sue them for slander.
Just weeks before the 1998 election, then-DPP Kaohsiung City councilor Chen Chun-sheng (陳春生) released an audio tape suggesting that Wu, who was seeking re-election as Kaohsiung mayor, had had an affair with a female reporter.
Wu filed a lawsuit against Chen and in September 2005 a judge ruled that the tape was a fake.
In December 2006, Chen said Hsieh had given him the tape and asked him to release it. Hsieh then filed a slander lawsuit against Chen.
Asked for comment, Wu yesterday called Hsieh “vicious.”
“Chen Chun-sheng’s press conference was arranged by the Hsieh camp. Hsieh is so vicious. That’s why he is surrounded by so many scandals,” Wu said.
Responding to Hsieh’s threat to sue him, Chiu said: “He is wicked. Normal men like us would never do evil things [like he did].”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG
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