Four female special agents from the National Security Bureau will be assigned to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in the run-up to the Jan. 14 election, the bureau said yesterday.
The bureau has worked out a series of security arrangements based on the assumption that there will be three pairs of candidates in the presidential election, National Security Bureau -Director-General Tsai De-sheng (蔡得勝) said in response to questions in the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
“About 145 special agents, including eight women, will be needed,” he said, adding that four of the female agents will be assigned to the DPP presidential candidate.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
A budget of NT$130 million (US$4.3 million) has been allocated to provide security for the presidential and vice presidential candidates, he said, adding that this included the acquisition of armored vehicles.
Tsai Ing-wen will be issued bulletproof vests of the same grade as those used by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), he said.
With the Special Security Force to become an official task force on Nov. 3, the bureau is training agents to prevent shootings.
Other protective measures include keeping the presidential and vice presidential candidates off the same stage during events, placing limits on the use of firecrackers and arranging security checks around the exits of stages.
Bureau officials also said that to avoid security breaches caused by presidential and vice presidential candidates ignoring security advice, there would be a tight-knit communications channel with the candidates.
To inform the presidential candidates of security deployments, the bureau, accompanied by -Central Election Commission (CEC) members, will visit the campaign headquarters of the presidential candidates who have completed registration or finished party preliminaries.
The bureau will also invite the candidates to the Special Service Center for another briefing on the overall security measures for the elections, it said.
Meanwhile, Tsai Der-sheng said one of the armored vehicles used by former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) during his two terms had been in storage for three years and was no longer in use.
The Chinese-language United Daily News reported yesterday that the bureau wanted to give an armored vehicle used by Chen to the National Property Administration and that it hoped the administration could sell it.
However, the report said the administration told the bureau that by law, if a public vehicle’s condition is too poor to be used, it must be scrapped and sold.
Tsai Der-sheng said the Presidential Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as other government bureaus, had all said they did not want the vehicle.
The odometer shows a little more than 10,000km, he said.
“It’s still good, but we do not know what to do with it,” he said, adding that it was unlikely that the vehicle would be sold as scrap.
With translation by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
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