As the recount of the ballots from the presidential election began yesterday, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Ma said that the recount would only show "a part of the truth" about the presidential election, and many people still want to know the truth about the election-eve assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian (
"Although I think everyone should accept the outcome of the vote recount, I have to remind you that the recount is merely one part of the controversy surrounding the presidential election," Ma said after attending an activity held by the city government yesterday.
"Aside from the recount, one poll also showed that over 50 percent of the voters desired to know the truth of the shooting incident on March 19," the Taipei mayor said.
Ma added that it was necessary to establish a special task force in the Legislative Yuan to investigate the shooting incident, otherwise the public would never trust the legitimacy of Chen's presidency.
Wang, who doubled as the director-general of the KMT-People First Party (PFP) alliance's national campaign team during the election, expressed a similar opinion, saying that the recount was only the first stage of the pan-blue alliance's struggle against the election results.
Wang said that the pan-blue alliance would still proceed with its project of checking the voter registration lists as well as the lawsuit, even if the recount shows that the Chen-Lu ticket had more votes.
"The recount is only a part of our election-fraud lawsuit. If the recount shows that KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party (PFP) Chair-man James Soong (宋楚瑜) actually got more votes than Chen and Lu, then the election results will be overturned," Wang said.
"The recount will be the basis for the examination of the voter registration list, and if the gap between the two sides shrinks to within 10,000 votes, and there are more than 10,000 questionable entries from the voters' name list and the ballots, then the judge will make a decision based on that evidence," Wang said.
"The lawsuit depends on the court's decision, and it is possible that the court would decide on a re-election," the legislative speaker said.
Wang, however, was reluctant to predict the recount results.
He said that he did not know anything about what was in the ballots, and could not comment on it.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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