Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as well as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) incumbents held their respective seats after polls in central Taiwan yesterday.
Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬) defeated her KMT rival, Wu Wei-chih (吳威志), by a wide margin, while the KMT retained its edge in the rural counties of Changhua and Nantou.
Su garnered 229,958 votes, or 65.37 percent, while Wu received 121,832 votes, or 34.63 percent of the total.
Compared with the last commissioner election in Yunlin, in which Su beat the KMT’s Hsu Shu-po (許舒博) by 8.89 percent, garnering 53.37 percent of the votes, Su overwhelmed Wu yesterday by 30.74 percent, winning 65.37 percent of the votes despite Wu’s campaign attacks on Su over the latter’s alleged involvement in corruption.
Su was indicted by Yunlin prosecutors in November last year on charges of accepting bribes related to a landfill project, but she has maintained her innocence and staged a hunger strike when was detained by prosecutors.
Changhua County Commissioner Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) defeated the DPP’s Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠), repeating the result from four years earlier.
Independent candidate Chang Chun-nan (張春男) came in third.
Cho won 348,341 ballots, or 54.89 percent of the vote, maintaining the KMT’s dominance in the county.
Although Wong had accused Cho of corruption related to a redevelopment project in Changhua’s Yuanlin City and of violating prior campaign promises to push reconstruction in Changhua, Wong only managed to win 276, 897 votes, or 43.63 percent of the total — slightly more than she garnered in the 2005 elections.
“Residents of Changhua made an important, rational choice in this election and chose a brighter future,” Cho said after announcing his victory at around 7:30pm.
He vowed to continue to turn Yuanlin into a “happy” and “prosperous” city.
Nantou will also remain under KMT rule after Commissioner Lee Chao-ching (李朝卿) beat his DPP counterpart, Lee Wen-chung (李文忠), by 11.12 percent despite Lee Chao-ching having been accused of having criminal ties during campaigning.
Lee Wen-chung had accused Lee Chao-ching and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) of having close connections with Chiang Chin-liang (江欽良), a paroled former gangster who is allegedly influential in the county.
Lee Chao-ching garnered 136,951 votes, or 50.87 percent of the votes, while Lee Wen-chung, a former legislator, won 107,023 votes, or 39.75 percent.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
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