Both the pan-blue and the pan-green camps agreed to recount all the ballots from the presidential election, but neither political alliance wants to be responsible for paying the necessary expenses to conduct the process.
The Taiwan High Court held the first hearing for the suit yesterday. The suit was filed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-People First Party (PFP) alliance in order to suspend President Chen Shui-bian (
How to process the recount and who will pay the necessary expenses of the legal process were the subject of arguments between the plaintiff and the defendant.
PHOTO: CNA
Prior to yesterday's hearing, the parties had not come to an agreement on how to recount the ballots.
In addition to recounting invalid ballots, the KMT-PFP alliance insisted on examining and recounting only the valid ballots cast in favor of Chen and Lu. But the pan-green camp said that all ballots, including valid and invalid, should be examined and recounted at the same time.
Presiding Judge Wu Ching-yuan (吳景源) asked both parties to come up with an agreement and submit it to the court within five days.
However, during the hearing, one of the pan-blues' lawyers said that the plaintiff would "respect the DPP's decision regarding the process of recounting the ballots." The statement was interpreted as an acknowledgement that the pan-blues' previous position -- recounting only the votes in favor of Chen -- was unlikely to find a sympathetic hearing in the court
In addition, after the hearing had concluded, Tsai Yu-ling (蔡玉玲), one of the KMT-PFP alliance's lawyers, again said that "it will not be difficult to come up with an agreement with the pan-green camp over this issue."
During the hearing, Wu said "do not come back to the court and ask us to pay your legal fees once the case is closed."
Both parties had different views regarding how to pay off the legal bill.
Lee Yi-kwang (
"The case concerns the Presidential Election and Recall Law [總統副總統選舉罷免法]. The law also regulates that the process of a suit should follow the Code of Civil Procedure [民事訴訟法]," Lee said.
"However, the case itself is an administrative error, so the plaintiff is not supposed to pay, as the mistake was made by a third party, which is a government office," the lawyer said.
The "government office" Lee was referring to is the Central Election Committee (CEC). According to Lee's arguments, when the Presidential Election and Recall Law was passed, the Code of Administrative Procedure (
In response to the KMT-PFP alliance's argument, Wellington Koo (顧立雄), one of the Democratic Pro-gressive Party's (DPP) law-yers, said that the defendant was not required to pay either, because they are merely cooperating with the plaintiff's and the public's request.
"If we ask for a recount, we should expect to have to pay," said Koo. "But we did not ask for a recount."
In the meantime, Wu said that the court will negotiate with the CEC and determine whether it is possible to process the recount for free.
If so, the court will only have to witness and oversee the process of the recount.
"To `witness' and `oversee' such a process is our job, so there will not be any extra fees. Then, all of the financial problems will be solved," Wu said.
In addition to the arguments over the issues of how the recount shall be processed and who will pay the legal fees, DPP lawyers have also rebutted the arguments of the KMT-PFP alliance's lawyers as to why the pan-blues filed such a suit.
According to one of the pan-blues' lawyers, Hanson Chiang (
"In addition to the alleged vote-rigging, the launch of the so-called `national security mechanism' and the cancelation of all campaign activities affected many voters' -- mostly soldiers' and police officers' -- legal rights to participate in the election, since they had to stay on duty to conduct strict security measures. That hurt us a lot," Chiang said.
However, Koo said that these arguments should not be regarded as valid by the court because the pan-blue camp has not provided any evidence to support their allegations.
"All of the complaints they have made are about how the CEC performed its work," Koo said. "These other arguments are not relevant, are they?"
In addition to both parties' lawyers, yesterday's hearing was also attended by nearly 100 reporters and 50 observers. Wu did not announce a date for the second hearing of the case.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS