Taipei, Nov. 26 (CNA) More than 100 people have been detained on suspicion of vote buying ahead of Taiwan's five special municipality elections and local elections Saturday, according to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).
The MOJ's statistics showed that 130 people had been detained ahead of Saturday's "three-in-one" elections, which are the election of five city mayors, 314 city councilors and thousands of ward chiefs.
Among the detainees, 78 were suspected of being involved in buying votes for ward chief candidates while 52 were suspected of acting for city councilor candidates as of Thursday, according to the statistics.
The ministry said that 2,795 cases of alleged vote-buying had been reported and 35 suspects in 11 cases had been prosecuted as of Thursday.
The figures suggest that vote-buying is still rampant in Taiwan, especially in local elections, despite all the political parties, including the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), condemning such behavior.
However, the phenomenon had been anticipated since the total number of city councilors had reduced after eight cities and counties were merged or upgraded into five expanded special municipalities. Vote buying has also been common in grassroots-level elections in Taiwan.
The MOJ has made the crackdown on vote buying one of its top priorities. Premier Wu Den-yih had also asked the ministry last week to step up efforts to uncover instance of vote buying. (By Chris Wang) enditem