Mon, May 10, 2004 page8

• Editorial: What goes around comes around

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  And so the recount is to begin today. At last, many will say, thinking that this means an end to the disputes and accusations and prevalent air of uncertainty about the election and the legitimacy of the inauguration which is to take place in 10 days. But from the behavior of the pan-blues so far, this seems an unlikely outcome.

  The pan-blues' aim is the delegitimation of Taiwan's political settlement -- its constitutional, political and administrative mechanisms that decide how things get done. How far do they want to take this delegitimation, and do they understand its potential costs?

  What has become clear since the election. -- actually since Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰), within minutes of finding out he had lost, denounced the election as unfair and "illegal" -- is that the post-election protests and uproar were never about establishing whether the election had in fact been carried out fairly. After two months during which the pan-blues have been offering cash rewards for people to come forward with vote-fraud stories, they still could not produce a cogent enough argument to allow the courts to start hearing their case for the election's annulment last week.

  But the tactics the pan-blues are using here reveal deftness and audacity in equal measure. Given the pan-blues' expertise in the dark arts of vote-rigging during their half-century of power, this perhaps should not surprise us. To see them boxing clever now is only perhaps a surprise after watching the vicious stupidity of their election campaign, as exemplified by its equation of Chen with Osama bin Laden.

  Consider how the pan-blues have deliberately drawn out the legal process surrounding the recount to make it possible that it will not be complete by the inauguration date, thus giving them the possibility of refusing to recognize the validity of the president or what he does, promulgating laws for example, after May 20.

  Even if the recount confirms a Chen victory, if the result is produced after the inauguration there will be enough of a question mark over the event for the pan-blues to manipulate into an image of the administration riding roughshod over democratic processes, however unjustified this image may be.

  That the recount is going to be difficult is just about assured. The pan-blues have primed their observers with a booklet on how to dispute ballots. The first tactic is to ensure that previously invalid ballots that show pan-blue voter intention are re-categorized as valid and counted accordingly. The second is to make sure that there are enough disputed ballots left after the recount -- ie, more disputed ballots than the margin of victory -- to claim that the recount itself cannot resolve the election dispute. Which tactic they concentrate on will depend on the degree to which the judiciary administering the count bends to their wishes.

  But the most audacious tactic of all has to be the attempt to get hold of voter registration lists and compare these with who actually voted, in the hope of finding enough examples of illegal "proxy" voting.

  Of course, this is a tactic widely used by the pan-blues themselves -- "here's NT$2,000, lend us your ID card and we will vote for you." As they know who they did this for, they want the voter registration lists to be able to compile evidence acceptable in court that doesn't shine a light on their own role in the fraud.

  Can any of our well-informed readers recall an election in which a party attempts to use evidence of its own fraudulent practices to invalidate the result?

  All we can do is to remind the pan-blues that any tactics they use now will almost certainly be used against them, perhaps four years from now. How far in their attempted dissolution of the political machinery do they want to go?
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