The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday urged the leaders of the pan-blue parties to say that they will accept the result of presidential vote recount and stop spreading rumors about the judicial process.
"We have seen that Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and the People First Party [PFP] Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) still insist on `accepting' the result only on certain conditions," DPP Deputy Secretary-General Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said.
Lee said that President Chen Shui-bian (
"All national media are monitoring the recount process and so many resources and manpower have been put into the event. Therefore the justice of the recount should be respected," Lee said.
"However, Mr. Lien and Mr. Soong still refuse to promise to accept the result by setting some pre-conditions, which clearly shows that they do not trust the country's judicial system," Lee said.
The ruling DPP asked Lien and Soong to learn from their parties' elite, who continued to suggest that they accept the result of recount.
"Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
The DPP also condemned opposition legislators, who they said had stirred their supporters' emotions by spreading groundless speculation as part of their campaign for the year-end legislative elections.
"The recount is not a stage to allow those legislative candidates to show off. They are neither judges nor prosecutors," said Cheng Wen-tsan (
Cheng said that local television channels had cheated their audiences by giving false numbers during the original count on March 20.
"Many news channels, despite the official information from the Central Election Commission, showed that the KMT-PFP alliance's Lien-Soong ticket led the DPP's Chen-Lu ticket by more than 40,000 or 50,000 votes ... while the fact was that the Chen-Lu ticket got more votes than Lien-Soong," Cheng said.
"Millions of pan-blue camp supporters therefore believed that the government was involved in vote-rigging," Cheng said. "We hope that those legislators do not serve as TV anchors again and the media should not make the same mistakes."
During yesterday's recount, some pan-blue legislators entered vote recount centers and told the media about the numbers of "controversial ballots" they had seen, even though the official results will not be known until after the recount, which may take as long as 10 days, is completed.
DPP legislative caucus leader Chiu Tai-san (
"If all the people of the country are restricted from entering those recount centers, then opposition legislators should not have any privilege," Chiu said.
"Some KMT and PFP legislators gave unconfirmed figures of the vote recount to the media." Chiu said.
"Their behavior not only seriously harms the country's judiciary system but also leads to more chaos for the purpose of benefiting their campaign," Chiu said.
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