Speaker says he will obey law covering inauguration

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said yesterday that his participation in President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) inauguration ceremony on May 20 would proceed according to the law.

"Everything will be done in accordance with the law and in the spirit of following the law," Wang said when asked whether he would attend the inauguration.

According to the Seal Statute (印信條例), the legislative speaker must represent the Legislative Yuan in presenting the national seal and the seals of the president and vice president at the cere-mony. When asked about the pan-blue camp's boycott of the ceremony, Wang said that everyone can have their own opinion.

Wang also said that he had not discussed the matter with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰).

"There is no need to consult others about attending the inauguration. I am not being pressured on whether I should go or not. Everything will be dealt with according to the law," Wang said. He said the pan-blue camp's chances of having the election results overturned through a vote recount are unknown.

"The first thing the recount must focus on is finding out how many ballots, among those of the 3.3 million eligible voters who did not vote, were in fact cast fraudulently. But this requires that we obtain concrete evidence by checking the voter rolls," Wang said. "Only if we find more than 29,000 cases of ballots being obtained and cast fraudulently can the election be annulled."

"It is not known how probable it is that the result will be overturned, but the pan-blue camp should accept the results of the recount," Wang said.

Meanwhile, Wang said that Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had agreed to join a KMT task force responsible for handling the year-end legislative election.

The KMT decided Wednesday to set up a group on party reforms. This group's four sub-groups include one in charge of the year-end legislative election campaign.

The election sub-group is to be headed by KMT Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and Wang. Ma is to head the group focusing on the assassination attempt on Chen and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).

Wang was asked yesterday whether Ma's not being assigned to head the election group meant that Ma was losing power in the party. Wang said that this was not the case and that he had invited Ma to join the election group, and said that Ma had agreed.