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Ma wants central government to handle protesters

Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday urged the central government to take over responsibility for handling the protest by pan-blue supporters in front of the Presidential Office building, saying the Taipei City Government was incapable of handling such a "highly political controversy."

Several hundred protesters have been outside the Presidential Office since the pan-blue camp refused to concede defeat in Saturday's presidential election and demanded a recount.

Ma explained how he had managed the turmoil so far, as he faces accusations that he acquiesced to the pan-blue camp's protests and failed to clamp down on the illegal rallies in the center of the nation's capital.

Five Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislators yesterday lodged a complaint with the Control Yuan claiming Ma had failed to deal with protests, according to the Central News Agency (CNA).

The lawmakers said that according to the Assembly Law, the organizers of any assembly must lodge an application with the police six days before the planned activity. They questioned why the Taipei City Government accepted an application submitted by the pan-blue alliance after it launched the protest and why it failed to crack down on the protesters in accordance with the Assembly Law, the CNA report said.

"After observing the situation for several days, we can see this incident is a highly political controversy, which the Taipei City Government is powerless to deal with," Ma said, stressing that he had tried three times to persuade the protesters to leave the scene. "The protest will not come to an end as long as the protesters do not get a positive response to their appeals from the central government."

Throwing responsibility for handling the protests back to the central government, Ma urged the Cabinet or President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to promise the demonstrators that they will publicly and immediately start recounting the presidential election ballots and investigate the shooting incident, which he thought had a big impact on the election.

Ma said that the protesters had gathered in Poai District (博愛特區), over which the Presidential Office has jurisdiction, meaning the central government should be the body to deal with them.

Ma also criticized the Cabinet for asking him to handle the case but giving him only "verbal assistance."

"We can only deal with the problems of traffic order and noise pollution," Ma said. "The masses are not a mob. In fact, their appeals have won high support according to a recent poll. Under this circumstances we do not think it would be helpful to expel them."

Ma issued a permit for the pan-blue camp supporters to rally for the next four days, and for a massive rally that the pan-blue camp plans to hold on Saturday, which Ma said he was likely to join.

When Ma was notified during the news conference that Chen had suggested that the Legislative Yuan amend the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Law (總統副總統選罷法) so that a recount can occur sooner, Ma responded that it would be helpful to resolve the election dispute if the law was amended but that it was important that the law applied retroactively.
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