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2014 ELECTIONS: Rival links Chiayi mayoral candidate to vote-buying
By Jason Pan / Staff reporter
A woman in Chiayi yesterday holds up NT$4,000 that she says she was given in exchange for the votes of herself and three family members in return for promising to vote for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chiayi mayoral candidate Chen Yi-chen.
Photo: Ting Wei-chieh, Taipei Times
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chiayi mayoral candidate Chen Yi-chen (陳以真) and her campaign team were accused of vote-buying yesterday by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Twu Shiing-jer’s (涂醒哲) campaign staff.
Chen and her team have been reportedly been offering NT$1,000 to registered voters for each of their votes, Twu’s staff said.
They said they had sufficient evidence, including telephone conversations, audio recordings and Line messages to support their allegations and they went to the Chiayi District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday to file a request for an investigation.
The campaign office’s secretary-general, Hsu Shih-chieh (許世杰), said Chen should quit the race.
“Chen Yi-chen should be ashamed. We ask that she withdraw from the election now,” Hsu told a news conference.
According to Twu’s campaign staff, a Chiayi resident provided an audio recording and Line message as evidence, and signed a document agreeing to the filing of a request for an judicial investigation.
The woman, who lives in the east of the city, said a betel-nut vendor telephoned her on Oct. 31 and told her to vote for Chen, offering her NT$1,000 for the vote.
When she told the man that there are four eligible voters in her family, the man said he would give her NT$4,000 for the votes and asked her to collect the money at his betel-nut stall on Nov. 2.
When the woman went to collect the money, she said she was reminded to vote for Chen.
The woman said she later felt regret because Chiayi was one of the centers of Taiwan’s democracy movement in the 1980s, and should not be sullied by vote-buying, so she went to Twu’s campaign office to report the incident.
Chen issued a statement last night saying she always insisted on a clean campaign and accusing Twu’s campaign office of fabricating the story.
Chen said she plans to instruct her lawyer to sue Twu for slander and malicious accusation.
source: Taipei Times
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