The Central Election Commission (CEC) yesterday said it would turn over to prosecutors 5,271 allegedly forged signatures that were submitted by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) to qualify as an independent candidate for next year’s presidential election.
CEC Chairman Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) told the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee that more than 130,000 signatures submitted by Gou and running mate Tammy Lai (賴佩霞) were invalid, including the ones believed to have been forged.
On Tuesday, the CEC certified 902,389 of the 1.03 million signatures submitted by Gou and Lai’s campaign, confirming their eligibility to run in the presidential election on Jan. 13 next year.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
They needed at least 289,667 signatures, or 1.5 percent of eligible voters in the previous presidential election, to get on the ballot.
Gou and Lai can register as presidential and vice presidential candidates between Monday and Friday next week.
Lee said the commission had reviewed each signature, and the results were comprehensive.
In other election news, the Ministry of the Interior reported that from July 1 to Monday, the police had investigated 52 incidents of alleged bribery, 90 reports of suspected election-related gambling and nine cases of spreading false information about the election.
The police have forwarded 10 incidents of bribery involving signature drives to district prosecutors’ offices, National Police Agency Director-General Huang Ming-chao (黃明昭) said, adding that there were still “a few” that the agency was still investigating.
Deputy Minister of Justice Huang Mou-hsin (黃謀信) said that prosecutors’ offices daily receive new information about incidents involving election signature drives, adding that he could not estimate the precise number of reports they have received.
Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) said that district prosecutors’ offices would pursue all incidents that contravene the law.
Tsai said that if prosecutors discover anomalies or suspect bribery related to signature drives, they would follow the money to find the source.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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