Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Kaohsiung City Councilor Wang Ling-chiao (王齡嬌) yesterday filed a malfeasance and forgery lawsuit against Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) over a nap Chen admitted to taking during last month’s typhoon.
“I’m suing Chen Chu for forgery, neglecting her duty [as chief director of the city’s disaster prevention center], which in turn caused the disaster [flooding on Sept. 19],” Wang said at the Kaohsiung Prosecutors’ Office, accompanied by a number of borough chiefs.
Wang held Chen and two deputy mayors — Lee Yung-te (李永得) and Lin Jen-yi (林仁益) — responsible for the flooding caused by hours of rain brought by Typhoon Fanapi, adding that neither Chen nor the two deputy mayors were in the disaster prevention center during the afternoon of the typhoon.
The flooding left almost half of the city’s districts and neighboring townships in Kaohsiung County knee-deep in water.
Chen on Wednesday last week said she returned to her residence that afternoon after inspecting flooded areas and took a 20 to 30 minute nap while the two deputy mayors also rested in their dormitories.
The KMT has criticized the mayor over the issue.
Wang yesterday also accused the mayor of forgery, saying that the city government deliberately provided her with a false schedule for Chen during her investigation of the mayor’s alleged malfeasance.
Meanwhile, Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing’s (楊秋興) campaign sued one of Chen’s campaign staffers for allegedly spreading lies over the Internet.
Tseng Yin-lin (曾尹儷), spokeswoman for Yang’s campaign, accused Chen’s Internet secretary Kao Min-lin (高閔琳) of posting an article on the nation’s biggest academic bulletin board system (BBS) — Professional Technology Temple (PTT) — in which Kao said Yang had been caught lying about his inspection tours of flooded townships during the typhoon.
Tseng said Kao allegedly asked the administrators of the BBS to delete her BBS account after Yang’s campaign began to look into the identity of the article’s author.
The campaign decided to sue Kao for violating the Civil Servants’ Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) and defamation, because Kao failed to offer an apology within 24 hours, Tseng said.
When approached by reporters, Chen declined to comment on the two lawsuits.
Kao later yesterday threatened to file a counter-suit against Yang, saying that most of the content of the article to which he objected so vociferously came from reports published in the Chinese-language United Daily News.
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