Criticism of the pan-blue camp's legal team emerged from within yesterday amid other controversy sparked by the camp's election lawsuit loss on Thursday.
Saying that the People First Party (PFP) and Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) legal team was not sharp enough in its strategy, PFP Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) yesterday said that the lawyers should have made the alliance's pending lawsuit against the legitimacy of the election the focus of its agenda.
The pan-blue alliance filed two lawsuits over President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) re-election. The first lawsuit challenged Chen's confirmation as president for a second term based on allegations that the government had manipulated election results through ballot mis-counting as well as the election eve shooting of Chen and Vice President Annette Lu (
The second lawsuit challenged the timing of the election.
The pan-blue camp lost the first lawsuit on Thursday, while the second lawsuit is still pending. The pan-blue camp has sworn to appeal the first lawsuit.
"If we had made the lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of election's timing our focus, then our chances of winning would have been higher, because we have more evidence for that lawsuit," Chiu said.
Evidence such as irregularities in voter registration lists, Chiu said, would have been more effective if used in the second lawsuit, whereas the first lawsuit would have benefited from more time for investigation.
In response, the spokesperson for the pan-blues' legal team, Lai Shu-ju (
"A lawyer is meant to fulfill his or her duty in the courts without the burden of political manipulation or strategy," Lai said.
The alliance's lawyers actually worked harder than those of the government, Lai said, because the burden of proof was on the pan-blue camp.
"We would not have taken on or presented the cases as we did," Lai said, if the pan-blue camp had not been optimistic about the lawsuits' success.
Speaking at the KMT's headquarters yesterday, Lai also questioned the government's release of forensic expert Henry Lee's report on the election-eve shooting.
Why was the report made public yesterday only after it was used in the lawsuit, Lai asked.
"This was a civil suit, not a criminal lawsuit. When do you have evidence that is not made public in a civil suit?" Lai said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
The US’ joint strikes with Israel on Iran dismantled a key pillar of China’s regional strategy, removing an important piece in Beijing’s potential Taiwan Strait scenario, said Zineb Riboua, a senior researcher at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Peace and Security. In an article titled: “The Iran Question Is All About China,” Riboua said that understanding the Iran issue in the context of China’s “grand strategy” is essential to fully grasp the complexity of the situation. Beijing has spent billions of dollars over the years turning Iran into a “structural strategic asset,” diverting US military resources in the
RSS