Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) yesterday accused Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) vice presidential candidate Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) of breaking the law.
Showing photographs of two detached mansions in a vacant lot, Chiu accused Su of violating rules governing the use of farmland which stipulate that the percentage of a plot of agricultural land used for houses should not exceed 10 percent.
Chiu made the allegations during a question-and-answer session at the legislature.
According to Chiu, construction permits for the two mansions located in the Changchih Township (長治), Pingtung County, where Su Jia-chyuan’s family and that of his sister-in-law live, were awarded in 2003 when Su Jia-chyuan was county commissioner.
By using the farmland to build the mansions Su had violated the “Regulations Governing Agricultural Dwelling Houses” (農業用地興建農舍辦法), established to ensure that farmland is used for agricultural purposes, Chiu said.
Although the issuance of such permits was within the sphere of local governments’ statutory authority, it was a violation of conflict-of-interest rules that Pingtung County Government approved the projects, Chiu added.
Chiu asked Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and the Executive Yuan to look into possible negligence on the part of Pingtung County Commissioner Tsao Chi-hung (曹啟鴻), who Chiu claimed said in 2007 that the local government would raze the mansions, but had so far failed to do so.
Chiu also accused Su Chia-fu (蘇嘉富), Su Jia-chyuan’s older brother, of involvement in the illegally mined sand and gravel businesses, citing a statement made by the older Su in a case he brought against Chiu in 2008, a case in which prosecutors decided not to indict Chiu.
In the statement Su Chia-fu told prosecutors that he sometimes played the role of intermediary between buyers and the sand and gravel mining industry and that police turned a blind eye to truck drivers suspected of transporting illegally mined sand and gravel when they learned that they were working with Su Chia-fu when Su Jia-chyuan was commissioner, Chiu said.
Chiu also alleged that Su Jia-chyuan’s wife, Hung Heng-chu (洪恆珠), a public servant, accompanied him on electioneering on Tuesday during working hours.
In response, DPP campaign office spokesperson Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) said the allegations were all untrue.
“The integrity of Su Jia-chyuan has been tried and tested in many elections. The DPP will not dance to Chiu’s tune,” Hsu said, adding that Su Jia-chyuan had obtained legitimate permits to build his house and Hung had taken a day off on Tuesday.
‘LAX HANDLING’: Taichung city councilors decried that police initially let the three leave the scene of a crash that preceded the attack, which left a student in a coma Three men were detained in Taichung yesterday after their vehicle was hit and they allegedly assaulted the other driver with a baseball bat, resulting in a serious head injury. Chang Tun-liang (張敦量), 23, Chen Ching-hao (陳勁豪), 19, and Lee Wei-lin (李韋霖), 25, might be charged with attempted homicide, illegal confinement causing injury to the victim and “interference with public order,” the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said. The other driver — a 19-year-old student, surnamed Sung (宋), who is enrolled at Feng Chia University in Taichung — remains in a coma. A report by Sixth Police Precinct officers said that Sung was driving a
The Keelung City Health Bureau has launched an investigation after high-school students were given a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine two weeks ago, despite a central government decision to suspend second doses for teenagers. At a city council meeting on Wednesday, Keelung Councilor Lin Min-hsun (林旻勳) said that 450 students at Nuannuan Senior High School had received their second Pfizer-BioNTech dose on Oct. 29. Bureau head Wu Tse-cheng (吳澤誠) said that his office in the middle of last month notified medical facilities and schools in the city to suspend provision of the vaccines to those aged 12 to 17. No
MIX-UP: A Taipei clinic had given the Moderna vaccine to 23 people who had registered for a second dose of the AstraZeneca jab, the city health department said Those who contravene Lunar New Year holiday quarantine measures would face harsh penalties, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center last week announced two additional quarantine options for Taiwanese who arrive in the nation between Dec. 14 and Feb. 14 next year, as a surge of inbound travelers is expected before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday in late January. Travelers who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can stay for seven days in a quarantine hotel or self-paid centralized facility followed by seven days of quarantining at home, while others can quarantine for 10 days in a
‘A BREAKTHROUGH’: TSRI Fabrication Service Division director Li Kai-shin said the key step forward in making the device entailed perpendicular magnetic anisotropy The Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute (TSRI) yesterday unveiled a new memory device it developed with university researchers, saying that they are the world’s second team after Intel to make the breakthrough. Magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) is widely regarded as having the potential to become a mainstream device, TSRI Fabrication Service Division director Li Kai-shin (李愷信) told a news conference in Taipei. To develop the device, global manufacturers have been working on various techniques, including spin-transfer-torque MRAM (STT-MRAM) and spin-orbit-torque MRAM (SOT-MRAM), although SOT-MRAM is still mostly in the research phase, he said. The institute has worked with local researchers to develop a
RSS