Pingtung County prosecutors and judicial officers yesterday searched a local Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) office, and summoned 11 KMT members and staff for questioning over allegations of signature fraud in a campaign to recall an indigenous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker.
Prosecutors and local Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) officers gathered materials and evidence at the KMT chapter’s office in Pingtung County.
Among the 11 summoned for questioning were Hsiao Jung-ming (蕭榮明), chief secretary of the local KMT office, and Chang Fang-shuo (張芳碩), an aide of KMT Legislator Lu Hsien-yi (盧縣一), also known by his Rukai name Sasuyu Ruljuwan.
Photo Courtesy of Saidhai Tahovecahe’s office
Hsiao and Chang, and nine other KMT staff, are suspected of document forgery and fraud relating to the petition drive, and of contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) and the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), Pingtung County head prosecutor Hsu Yu-chuan (許育銓) said in a statement.
Lu, his aide and KMT staff are suspected of breaching recall regulations by copying names off party member lists, forging people’s signatures and other fraudulent conduct in the campaign to recall Saidhai Tahovecahe, a Rukai DPP lawmaker.
Saidhai Tahovecahe said she had filed a judicial complaint asking Pingtung prosecutors to investigate after receiving reports from indigenous friends and relatives who found the names of dead people, including family members, or their own names on the list of signatures submitted by Chang, the head of the recall campaign, although they had never signed any forms or given their consent.
Pingtung prosecutors said that among the thousands of signatures submitted for the first-stage threshold — 1 percent of the voters of mountain indigenous districts across Taiwan — they found 1,521 invalid ones, either because of errors in filling the forms or suspected forged signatures, including 202 containing names of deceased indigenous people and 140 people who do not have indigenous status.
“A young man told me that his grandfather passed away several years ago, but his name was on the submitted list. Some indigenous voters said they have never signed any recall form, but they received calls from election officers asking them to verify their signatures on the recall forms. So we requested an investigation into these illegal activities by Chang and fellow KMT members who are trying to remove me from office,” Saidhai Tahovecahe said.
“It is clear that indigenous KMT Legislator Lu was involved right from the start, as Lu had said in a TV interview in February that the head of the recall campaign against me is a legislator’s aide who obeyed instructions from party headquarters,” she said.
“Lu later changed his story several times, telling reporters in April that the head of the recall drive had solicited signatures through his personal efforts, and is not a legislator’s aide, nor related KMT,” she added.
Lu yesterday confirmed receiving a call from Chang, who said he was in Taichung and had been summoned by MJIB officers for questioning, but denied any involvement in the case.
“Chang is an assistant in my legislative office, but we believe he is innocent. He only put down his name to head the recall drive, and worked to gather forms from the public,” Lu said.
“How could he have known that the forms contained errors or that they would be declared invalid?” he asked.
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