The Taichung District Court yesterday handed down mostly suspended sentences to workers at the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Taichung chapter for falsifying documents in an effort to recall two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers last year.
In a brief statement, the court said it sentenced the chapter’s senior officials, Chen Chien-feng (陳劍鋒) and Wu Kang-long (伍康龍), to 21 months and 23 months in prison respectively, suspended for five years.
Wu and Chen were also stripped of their civil rights for two years and fined NT$300,000 and NT$250,000 respectively, the court said.
Photo: Chen Chien-chih, Taipei Times
It also sentenced 30 other party staff to prison terms ranging from three to 14 months, all suspended for two to three years.
Two other defendents, surnamed Chou (周) and Mai (買), received jail terms of nine months and one year respectively, with those sentences not suspended.
The court did not specify why it did not suspend the sentences of Chou and Mai, saying only that the rulings can be appealed.
All of the defendents were found guilty of contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法).
According to the indictments filed by prosecutors, the 34 defendents forged 4,258 signatures following the chapter’s decision in January last year to launch recall petitions against legislators Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) and Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純).
Wu was chief of the recall campaign, while Chen assisted in promotional work. The two men directed their staff to organize and shuffle the forged signatures to avoid detection before submitting the completed petitions to the Taichung Election Commission, prosecutors said.
People who initiate recalls need to collect signatures of enough eligible voters in the constituency to reach the threshold to send the decision to a vote.