It remains unclear how soon the Taiwan election row will be
resolved since the island's high court rejected the Kuomintang's
(KMT's) move to declare Saturday's election legally invalid.
Thousands of protesters continued their vigil?Thursday in
Taipei, pressing for a recount after a disputed vote they said was
marred by "numerous clouds of suspicion."
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidates Chen Shui-bian and
Annette Lu, who were seeking reelection, reportedly led their
challengers by a very narrow margin of less than 30,000 votes.
According to initial figures, Chen and Lu won 6,471,970 votes,
or 50.11 percent of the total, against 49.89 percent of the votes,
totaling 6,442,452, for Lien Chan and James Soong of the KMT-People
First Party coalition.
But immediately after the election Lien and Soong called the
result into question, claiming the polling "was an unfair election"
marred by voting irregularities and an unexplained election-eve
shooting.
The opposition suggested that the mysterious shooting that
slightly wounded both Chen and Lu one day before the polls seems
suspicious.
After the attack, Chen activated a national security protocol,
which meant that 200,000 military and police could not vote.
Also at the heart of the row is the high number of invalid
ballots, which totaled 337,297. That is almost triple the 122,278
figure in 2000 and 11 times Chen's margin of victory.
The opposition demanded all the ballot boxes be sealed to
prepare for a recount and filed a petition to nullify the election.
The high court ordered all ballot boxes from some 13,000 polling
stations islandwide sealed on Sunday.
The Taiwan high court, however, rejected the KMT's lawsuit to
invalidate the tightly contested race yesterday. It said the KMT
may resubmit its claim at a later date.
Nullification of the result would force another election.
"The main reason is that the plaintiff is required to file suit
within 15 days of the central election commission's announcement of
the election result," court spokesman Wen Yao-yuan reportedly
said.
"The election commission has not yet announced the result, so
the court ruled to reject the lawsuit."
The election commission is expected to announce the result
officially tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the ruling and opposition parties appeared to have
made little progress in resolving the dispute because they still
disagree about how to do a speedy recount.
(China Daily March 25, 2004)