The Presidential Office yesterday publicized evidence relating to the attempted assassination of President Chen Shui-bian (
Explaining why photos of the president being treated for his gunshot wound in hospital were not made available on the day of the shooting, Presidential Office Spokesman James Huang (
PHOTO COURTESY OF PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE
"President Chen indicated that the presidential election should not be affected by the gunshot incident," Huang said. "If we did want to affect the election, we could have released the photos Friday night, which would absolutely have gained a lot of sympathy and affected voters' intentions.
"Therefore, the government appeals to the public to return to their normal lives and just allow the legal system to go ahead," Huang said.
The shooting occurred Friday afternoon, while Chen and Vice President Annette Lu (
The pair were immediately escorted to the Chi Mei Medical Center in Tainan County. According to medical staff at the hospital the injuries were not life-threatening and the two remained conscious throughout their treatment.
The pan-blue camp, has however, questioned whether in fact the assassination attempt wasn't a stunt organized to get sympathy for Chen prior to the voting.
The pan-blues claim that voting should not have gone ahead on Saturday and that the election could have been postponed until the facts behind the assassination attempt could be clearly ascertained.
Independent lawmaker Sisy Chen (
She suggested that the entire incident was a falsified event to try to sway voters. She claimed to have information from "an anonymous nurse" claiming "the national security system was involved in the conspiracy."
The DPP campaign's executive manager Su Tseng-chang (
To further allay opposition parties' doubts about the incident, the Presidential Office yesterday publicized eight photos, showing the process of treatment of the president and the vice president.
The photos show President Chen being sutured on a hospital bed and Lu lying on a hospital bed with a wounded knee.
"This is the first time I have ever shown photos of my patients in a 20-year career, Hsiao Tzu-yu (
Hsiao said that he felt displaying the photos was a serious violation of doctor patient confidentiality and medical ethics.
Huang stressed that some people had spread rumors about the shooting to slander the head of the state, saying that the president was actually not injured and had even demanded to examine the president's stomach.
"We have contacted with the Chi Mei Hospital to try to find out whether there was a nurse who accused the government for manipulating the incident. The chief of the hospital told us that in fact there was a nurse who had made a call to Sisy Chen," Huang said.
"Looking at the photos, if the bullet was fired from a different angle and had hit the president one inch deeper, the president could have died," Huang said, adding that it was preposterous to think that the president's life could have been willfully endangered in such a manner.
The pan-blue camp has requested that all records of Chen and Lu's visit to Chi Mei be put aside for investigation.
Meanwhile, Tainan Chief Prosecutor Wang Jung-san (
"Due to the poor quality of the bullets, we cannot make sure whether they were fired from the same pistol," said Wang. "Also, for the same reason, we still have difficulties to figure out the exact location where the gunman opened fire, whether he shot the president and vice president in the crowd or from a higher position in one of the buildings along the road."
Wang made his remarks during a press conference yesterday afternoon. He said that the two homemade bullets the police discovered now became the biggest obstacles for them to identify and locate the suspect since it is difficult to get useful evidence from the bullets.
"We cannot even figure out what kind of pistol it was," he said.
However, Wang said that investigators are now pretty sure that the shooting took place between No. 8 and No. 36 on Jinhua Rd. Sec. 3. He explained it with two pictures in his hand.
"The first picture was taken when the president's vehicle was traveling by No. 8. There was no bullet hole on the vehicle's windshield," said Wang.
"However, the hole appears on this one, when the vehicle was passing by No. 36," he said.
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