Ten people affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) were given suspended sentences of 10 to 22 months by the Chiayi District Court on Friday for forging signatures in a drive to recall a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker.
Those sentenced include KMT Chiayi County branch
secretary-general Yang Fu-cheng (楊富程), who received a 22-month jail term suspended for five years, and the branch’s deputy chief, Kuo Shu-chiang (國恕強), who was given a 16-month sentence suspended for four years.
Photo: Ting Wei-chieh, Taipei Times
The court ordered Yang and Kuo to pay NT$600,000 and NT$400,000 respectively to the public treasury.
The others — Lai Chu-huang (賴珠煌), Lee Chun-chang (李俊昌), Chuang Mei-ling (莊美玲), Wang Li-chuan (王?娟), Wu Tzu-yin (吳紫茵), Ho Po-lun (何博倫), Chiang Chiu-tien (江秋田) and Lin Cheng-lu (林正祿) — received suspended sentences of 10 to 20 months.
Some were ordered to pay fines to the public treasury and perform community service.
The court said all 10 people sentenced, including Yang, had no prior criminal records and had admitted to the offenses.
They were aware of the consequences of their actions and seem unlikely to commit further offenses, the court said.
Prosecutors raided the KMT’s Chiayi County branch on June 5 investigating allegations of faking signatures to recall DPP Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷).
To get a recall initiative to a popular vote, those initiating the campaign need to gather a certain number of signatures from the general public to move it forward.
Workers and volunteers at the KMT Chiayi County branch took it into their own hands to create the needed signatures, prosecutors said.
The party branch held a meeting of core members on Jan. 24 and distributed about 300 blank recall petitions for them to fill out so that they could meet the required threshold of 2,204 signatures, prosecutors said in the indictment.
Between Feb. 3 and 8, the suspects asked friends to fill out petitions using the personal details of KMT members without their consent, forging signatures to push the total to 2,639, prosecutors said.
Among the petitions, 39 were in the name of dead people, and 511 contained incorrect names, addresses or ID numbers, they said.
The KMT unsuccessfully tried to mount recall campaigns against DPP lawmakers after civic groups pushed for recalls of KMT legislators, getting 31 of them to a popular vote.
All of the KMT lawmakers survived their recall votes.
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