Pan-blues go shopping for new judges

The opposition alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) refiled a lawsuit yesterday to challenge the result of the presidential election, hoping to find more pan-blue friendly judges, court officials said.

Taiwan High Court spokesman Wen Yau-yuan (溫耀源) said the court received and accepted the suit, which seeks to have the election declared a fraud, on Wednesday night.

The case will be heard by Presiding Judge Cheng Ya-ping (鄭雅萍) and her colleagues Wu Mo-yen (吳謀焰) and Yu Hui-chun (俞慧君), Wen said.

Inflexible judge

The opposition alliance had withdrawn the suit Wednesday morning, complaining of how Presiding Judge Ruan Fu-chih (阮富枝) was handling the case. The blue camp said that, by resubmitting the suit Wednesday night, they wished to have different judges hear the case.

Ruan had suggested the alliance merge the case with its other suit, which seeks to suspend President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮) election victory and hold a recount. The proposal was rejected by the alliance's lawyers.

Ruan said a merged suit "would speed up the entire process since a full recount will be something we will definitely do for both suits."

"But that was only a proposal, a suggestion, anyway," she said.

Commenting on the pan-blue camp's lack of confidence in the judge, the Democratic Progressive Party issued a press release yesterday to encourage the alliance to believe in judges and let the recount begin as soon as possible.

Second hearing

For the lawsuit aiming to suspend the election result and mandate a recount, the High Court said yesterday the judges will hold a second hearing on Monday to discuss how the recount should be carried out.

"The plaintiff, the KMT-PFP alliance, has submitted their agreement to begin a full recount on Wednesday, so the court decided to summon both parties to the second hearing for more details," Wen said at a press conference yesterday morning.

Wen said the hearing will be a closed-door hearing and judges will work with both the alliance and the DPP to figure out the details of the recount as well as to establish who will pay for the legal fees and the cost of the tally.

"We will make public the result of Monday's hearing on Tuesday," he added.

Wen said that, barring any major problems, a full recount can begin on April 17 or April 18.