Taiwan's opposition lawmakers have urged re-elected "president"
Chen Shui-bian to cancel his inauguration next week as the recount
of the disputed March election enters the fifth day on
Saturday.
The legislators say the recount, expected to take 10 days, is
showing the vote was riddled with serious problems, including
missing voter lists, mismarked ballots and votes that were sealed
in the wrong bags, said lawyers with the Kuomintang (KMT).
Taiwan media reports said that already more than 30,000 votes
have been challenged.
That should prompt the "president" to call off next Thursday's
inauguration, the opposition said.
"Friends in the media, people of Taiwan, we must speak out
loudly. Under these conditions, the organization of the
inauguration should be halted," KMT legislator Sun Kauo-hwa said in
a speech in the island's top legislature, "legislative yuan."
Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), however, argues that
the mistakes are connected to sloppiness inevitable in all major
elections.
The ruling party says there's no evidence of an organized effort
to rig the March 20 vote that the "president" won by a razor-thin
0.2 percent margin, or 30,000 votes.
The high court, which is overseeing the recount, has declined to
say who's winning the recount and how many ballots have been
counted. It will make a final ruling on how each of the disputed
votes that were singled out by lawyers representing the rival
candidates should be counted.
Another opposition lawmaker, Chou Hsi-wei, of the People First
Party, also called for a cancellation of the inauguration.
When a majority of people doubt that Chen won the March 20
election by relying on cheating and fraud, he should announce now
that on May 20 he will not be inaugurated, Chou told the
"parliament."
The opposition is planning a protest during the inauguration
ceremony.
In a related development, Taiwan police said on Friday they have
detained three suspects who might have been involved in an
unexplained March 19 shooting that lightly injured Chen and his
running mate, Annette Lu.
The suspects were caught with handguns and bullets similar to
those police think were used in the attack, investigator Wang
Chong-jong told reporters in the southern city of Kaohsiung.
Police were also suspicious about the suspects -- two men and a
woman who weren't fully identified -- because one of them operated
a pub near the shooting scene in Tainan, the southern city where
Chen was shot while parading in an open Jeep, Wang said.
However, initial tests showed that the weapon and bullets were
not identical to those used in the shooting, prosecutor Wang
Sen-jong said.
"The gun and bullets tested today were smaller than the ones
used on March 19. They didn't match," the prosecutor said.
But investigators suspected the men might have other weapons,
and they were still looking for a possible connection with the
shooting. Both men said they were innocent, police said.
The arrests could revitalize the investigation that has gone on
for several weeks without turning up any suspects or major
leads.
After searching the suspects' home, police found two handguns
and 33 bullets with bronze and lead tips like the ones used in the
"presidential" shooting, said Hou You-yi, head of the Criminal
Investigation Bureau.
One of the guns was German-made and the other was produced in an
illegal workshop, police said.
(China Daily May 15, 2004)