The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) yesterday said it had launched 984 investigations involving 1,447 individuals in relation to the special municipality elections to be held next month.
Unveiling the statistics, the ministry said prosecutors had probed 46 cases related to the five municipal mayoral races, 419 related to the municipal councilor polls and 519 cases related to borough elections.
Of the 984 cases, 900 concerned vote buying, involving 1,321 individuals. Thirty cases, involving 51 individuals, concerned election-related violence, and 54 cases, with 75 people involved, were related to slander suits over the elections.
So far, prosecutors have indicted two individuals on suspicion of vote buying, the ministry said.
The Democratic Progressive Party, which has called on the ministry to combat vote buying, said it feared Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates could again engage in the practice.
Several KMT candidates were indicted or found guilty of vote buying during last year’s three-in-one elections and in the most recent legislative election.
Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) yesterday encouraged the public to refer any vote buying activity to prosecutors, adding that such behavior would not be tolerated.
The special municipality elections will be held on Nov. 27 for Taipei City, Sinbei City (the soon-to-be-upgraded Taipei County), Greater Taichung (a merger of Taichung city and county), Greater Tainan (a merger of Tainan city and county) and Greater Kao-hsiung (a merger of Kaohsiung city and county).
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
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Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
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