The reasons that the Lien-Soong camp proposed to request judges to recount the ballots after they lost the presidential election last Saturday may not be strong enough.
The pan-blue camp filed two suits asking to suspend President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮) re-election on the grounds of fraud after the election. The pan-blues based their suits on four arguments.
PHOTO: CNA
According to the first argument, Chen allegedly forced nearly 200,000 military and police personnel to stay at their posts, instead of going home to vote on Saturday, because he decided to implement the so-called "national security mechanism" after he and Lu were shot during a campaign activity in Tainan City one day before the election.
The blue camp said that the shooting in Tainan was an incident staged by the green camp to win more support in the election.
The more than 330,000 invalid ballots registered in the election was also an argument for the blue camp. They said that they had good reasons to believe that the green camp was trying to cheat during the process. The pan-blues did not outline what those reasons were.
In addition, the blue camp also complained that the referendum was against the law and further alleged that the referendum was also an important factor that might affect the result of the election since it had nothing to do with the presidential poll.
In response to the first argument, the Ministry of National Defense and the National Police Administration's (NPA) Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) had defended the president's response to the shooting and stated that no personnel had been prevented from going home to vote because of the emergency response system.
In response to the complaint that the shooting was a staged incident, the Presidential Office made public the pictures and the video of Chen and Lu's hospitalization shortly after the incident and said it was impossible to fake them all.
The CIB, although they still have not found the gunman or the weapon as of press time yesterday, said it had been working very hard to complete all necessary identification, research and investigation processes of the case within the shortest time and has held press conferences regularly to update the media with the latest developments.
"My colleagues and I are willing to endorse our work with our lives," said CIB Commissioner Hou You-yi (
The Ministry of National Defense said that only 13,000 military servicemen, who were part of the normal combat alert status used during all previous elections, were required to stay at their posts instead of going home to vote after the "national security mechanism" was launched. NPA Director-General Chang Si-liang (張四良), when approached by reporters, said that he never ordered his fellow officers not to vote.
"We needed more manpower for the mechanism. However, all officers took turns voting, unless they voluntarily gave up that right. I never asked them not to vote," Chang said.
The key issue for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to win the suits and get another shot at becoming president and vice president is how to persuade judges that there is a need to recount the ballots. There would also have to be more ballots in their favor after the recount. However, many judges were complaining that to recount all the ballots is a huge project and will waste lots of money and time.
"A rough estimate showed that it will cost at least NT$20 million to recount," said a senior civil judge at the Taipei District Court who wished to remain anonymous. "In addition, the project also requires at least 3,000 judges and prosecutors to complete the job."
Lai Yung-hua (
"First of all, they have to persuade the judges that the way the Central Election Committee [CEC] employees recognize an invalid ballot is compromised. However, even if that is the case, they may not gain any more votes after judges recount the ballots," said Lai. "As for the rest of the arguments they proposed, they did not seem to be particularly persuasive to me."
The Alliance of Casting One Million Invalid Ballots (百萬廢票聯盟) Chairman Cheng Tsun-chi (鄭村棋), who is a former Labor Bureau chief for the Taipei City Government, and independent Legislator Su Ying-kuei (蘇盈貴) both believed the blue camp should not question the number of invalid ballots or accuse the green camp of cheating. What they should care about is the way the CEC recognizes an invalid ballot.
"To avoid possible cheating, the Ministry of Justice amended the Presidential Election and Recall Law (總統副總統選舉罷免法) on Oct. 29, 2003," said Su. "There are strict regulations in this law about recognizing an invalid ballot. That is actually the key to why there were so many invalid ballots this time."
Su believed that if judges decide the way the CEC recognizes invalid ballots is acceptable, the Lien-Soong camp would not be able to change anything using the suits.
As for the referendum, Cheng said that it had nothing to do with the blue camp's losing the election.
"The referendum actually failed this time. It means voters recognized that the referendum was one thing, and electing a president and vice president was quite another," Cheng said.
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