The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday accused two pan-blue Taipei legislative candidates of vote-buying and violations of election law, alleging their campaigns handed out household products, electronic appliances and bicycles at recent events to solicit votes.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative candidate Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) is running for Taipei’s Zhongshan (中山) and Songshan (松山) districts, while New Party legislative candidate Pan Huai-tsung (潘懷宗) is running for Shilin District (士林).
DPP officials and lawyers on Thursday presented video and photographic evidence and requested that judicial authorities investigate the alleged violations.
The evidence allegedly shows Chiang’s office providing donations for raffles at several holiday events in local communities, where bicycles worth NT$2,000 and electric fans worth NT$1,000 were given out, with “donated by Chiang Wan-an” displayed on placards.
Video allegedly showed workers handing out more than 1,000 bottles of detergent featuring Pan’s likeness to residents at events.
Lien Li-jen (連立堅), executive director of a DPP task force to combat election fraud, urged judicial agencies to conduct an investigation.
“In the raffles, all of those who won a prize were voters in the district. This fits the criteria of a candidate offering benefits with attached conditions to voters,” he said.
In response to the allegations, Chiang said that while the donations originated from his office, “we were not the active party, I was invited to offer the prizes.”
He said that there were not conditions attached, adding: “For the raffles, the prizes were given away regardless of whether the winners support me or not.”
Meanwhile, Wang Yi-kai (王奕凱), who was an active participant in the Sunflower movement protests, accused Taipei police of giving Chiang preferential treatment.
Wang said he, on Wednesday, hired several workers to distribute leaflets which accused Chiang of vote-buying, “but police took the workers into custody for questioning.”
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