Two Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians lost their seats yesterday after losing their final appeals on vote-buying convictions in the High Court.
The court found KMT Taoyuan City Councilor Liu Mao-chun (劉茂群) guilty, upholding a ruling by the Taoyuan District Court that her giving out fruit gift packs valued at NT$738 to 38 members of a community management committee during her 2018 campaign breached the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
The act prohibits the presentation of gifts worth more than NT$30 at campaign activities.
The High Court ruling, which is final, annuls the result of her election.
It was a bitter ending for the seven-term KMT Taoyuan councilor, who has served for more than 20 years, winning elections in the city’s Bade District (八德).
“I have to face this adversity with calm and patience. Here I offer my apology to my constituents that I cannot fulfill my campaign promises,” Liu wrote on Facebook after the verdict was delivered.
The High Court’s Taichung Branch handed down the second ruling in a vote-buying case involving Miaoli County Toufen Township (頭份) Councilor Liu Wen-chao (劉文照) over the distribution of cash to eligible voters during the 2018 campaign. The cases against them were launched by rivals who lost the elections.
Prosecutors investigated the allegations that Miaoli County Councilor Cheng Chu-jan (鄭聚然) and Liu Wen-chao had teamed up to hand out cash to neighborhood leaders and vote-brokers.
In two cited incidents, a campaign staff member working for Cheng passed on NT$28,000 cash to a woman surnamed Lin (林) in September 2018, and presented NT$20,000 to a man surnamed Chung (鍾) the following month, as both said to have agreed to hand out NT$500 per voter in exchange for promise to vote for the two candidates.
One person testified that Chung had brought along Liu Wen-chao on door-to-door visits in Toufen neighborhoods, during which they would ask how many eligible voters were registered at the address, and then Liu Wen-chao told Chung to hand out NT$500 per voter.
In the earlier ruling, the Miaoli District Court found there was no firm evidence to support Cheng was the source of the money or knew about the vote-buying activities, and it dismissed the case against him, while it found Liu Wen-chao guilty.
In yesterday’s ruling, the High Court upheld Liu Wen-chao’s conviction, concurring with prosecutors’ case on the vote-buying charges and rescinding the election result for him.
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