By KHT Staff. AI-regenerated image based on reference pictures.
KAOHSIUNG — An election controversy erupted on Sunday, Oct. 11, after a roadside billboard listed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP, 民進黨) incumbent officeholders and candidates as endorsing Kuomintang (KMT, 國民黨) mayoral nominee Ko Chih-en (柯志恩).
Several of those listed denied endorsing Ko and demanded that their names be removed. The billboard also carried the name of a hometown association for Pingtung County natives. Ko was born in Pingtung.
Ko’s campaign told the media that it had not put up the billboard and opposed using people’s names without their consent. Its initial statement said the association did not know who had erected it.
In a later statement, the Kaohsiung City Pingtung County Hometown Association (高雄市屏東縣同鄉會) said local Pingtung supporters had independently produced the billboard, without a formal association decision or funding. It apologized for wording and layout that had caused difficulties for some councilors and said it would ask those responsible to revise the content.
Taipei-based political analyst and U.S. lawyer Ross Darrell Feingold explained that chicanery is part of Taiwan’s election campaigns, with a common term used to describe it: “奧步,” pronounced àubù in Mandarin and àu-pō in Taiwanese, meaning “dirty tricks.” An article published in 2020 discusses the term’s origins and use.
These so-called “dirty tricks” existed long before the social media era, Feingold explained, and are distinguished from vote buying. According to Feingold, examples include spreading rumors about alleged wrongdoing such as extramarital affairs or corruption by an opponent, inflated claims about the level of voter support, staged destruction of one’s own campaign banners, or in the view of some in Taiwan even the 2004 attempted assassination of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).
Article 104 of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) makes it a crime to disseminate rumors or false information through text, pictures, audio, video, speech, or other means with the intent of causing a candidate to be elected or defeated, where the information is sufficient to harm the public or another person. The offense carries a prison sentence of up to five years.
Prosecutions for this offense are rare compared with vote-buying prosecutions, including those involving small gifts or free meals, said Feingold.
He suggested that a defense might be that the person responsible believed someone had told them the named individuals endorsed Ko. A judge might find that the evidence did not establish the intent required for conviction, he said. This was his assessment of a possible defense, rather than a finding about the billboard’s creators.
