A string of scandals in Tainan involving local officials with links to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has thrown the party into disarray and could harm its chances of winning the election for Tainan City Council speaker today.
On Friday, Kuo Tsai-chin (郭再欽), who resigned as a member of the DPP Central Executive Committee on Dec. 14, announced his withdrawal from the party, a day after DPP Deputy Secretary-General Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) urged him to do so.
In a social media post on Thursday, Lin called on Kuo to leave the DPP over the latter’s alleged involvement in dumping slag illegally in farmland, for which prosecutors did not to press charges in 2015, but reopened the investigation in 2019.
Photo: Wang Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
The slag dumped in farmland in Tainan’s Syuejia District (學甲) in 2015 and the dumping of such waste in farmland elsewhere in 2019 was allegedly done by a now-disbanded recycling corporation named Misiasin, which Kuo owned.
Prosecutors on Dec. 12 indicted Kuo and seven others from Misiasin and another company for having about 679,970 tonnes of electric arc furnace slag buried at sites in Syuejia and Houbi (後壁) districts.
The two companies made NT$1.8 billion (US$58.61 million) from the operations, the indictment said.
The dumping issue, which was brought up during the local elections on Nov. 26, has been connected to two shooting incidents, in which a total of 88 bullets were fired, in Syuejia on Nov. 10, one of which was at a location reportedly used by Misiasin.
As of Friday, five people linked to the shootings, including Kung Hsiang-chih (孔祥志), a local with a criminal record, were arrested, but Hung Cheng-chun (洪政軍), believed to be the mastermind of the shootings, is still on the run, Tainan police said.
Lin urged Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) of the DPP, who defeated the KMT’s Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) in the Nov. 26 election by a margin of 4.4 percent — a narrower margin than polls showed — to face up to problems in the city government and the DPP.
However, some DPP politicians in Tainan do not see eye to eye with Lin.
Kuo said that Lin was shifting blame for the DPP’s poor showing in the Nov. 26 elections to him, adding that he was innocent in the illegal dumping cases.
DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃), who represents Tainan’s third electoral district, said that Lin does not understand the city well.
In the wake of the DPP’s poor showing on Nov. 26, the party should bring everyone together to figure out why it failed to rally its base and seek unity to recover instead of pointing fingers, Chen said.
In a separate case, Chen Kai-ling (陳凱凌), the head of the Tainan City Government’s Economic Development Bureau and a former DPP member, was taken into custody early on Friday and was held incommunicado for alleged involvement in multiple crimes, including accepting bribes from optoelectronics companies, Tainan prosecutors said.
Meanwhile, Tainan City councilor-elect Fang Yi-feng (方一峰) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Thursday told police that he was being intimidated by a DPP representative, accusing the representative of ordering him how to vote in the speaker election.
Tainan Fishers’ Association chairman Lin Shih-chieh (林世傑), who on Friday was questioned by Tainan prosecutors for allegedly intimidating Fang, announced his withdrawal from the DPP after he was released on bail of NT$50,000.
The DPP last month secured 28 seats in the 57-seat Tainan City Council, with the KMT winning 15, independents claiming 10, the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union two, and the Taiwan Solidarity Union and Taiwan Statebuilding Party one apiece.
The DPP hopes to win the speakership after the Taiwan Solidarity Union and the Taiwan Statebuilding Party expressed support for its candidate, Tainan City Councilor Chiu Li-li (邱莉莉).
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
‘MALIGN PURPOSE’: Governments around the world conduct espionage operations, but China’s is different, as its ultimate goal is annexation, a think tank head said Taiwan is facing a growing existential threat from its own people spying for China, experts said, as the government seeks to toughen measures to stop Beijing’s infiltration efforts and deter Taiwanese turncoats. While Beijing and Taipei have been spying on each other for years, experts said that espionage posed a bigger threat to Taiwan due to the risk of a Chinese attack. Taiwan’s intelligence agency said China used “diverse channels and tactics” to infiltrate the nation’s military, government agencies and pro-China organizations. The main targets were retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology to steal
RSS