DPP's anti-bribery committee suspends poll

By George Liao
Taiwan News, Staff Reporter
Page 2
2007-06-01 12:48 AM

The Democratic Progressive Party 's anti-bribery committee decided yesterday to suspend a poll that was part of its legislative primary process after allegations surfaced that one its candidates used call transfers to influence the telephone opinion poll, which was scheduled to be held yesterday.

The DPP also reached a resolution yesterday to look into all the opinion polls in all legislative districts to see if call transfers had been used by some contenders to rig the opinion polls.

According to an article in Next Magazine, the candidate Huang Chien-hui (黃劍輝) applied for 1,000 temporary telephone numbers in mid-May from Chunghua Telecom to boost his rankings in the opinion poll, which accounts for 70 percent in the primary results.

Huang's rival, Lin Shu-fen, on Wednesday filed a complaint with the party's headquarters over suspicions regarding an abnormal increase in the number of telephone installations and call transfers in her district, which she said were an indication that the opinion poll was being rigged.

In response to the allegations in the magazine report and the claims made by his rival, Huang said someone had been trying to use the media to influence the primary.

He said that according to the DPP opinion poll center, only telephone numbers applied for before the end of February will be used in the poll.

:( Obviously, not great news. We'll see what happens.