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Politics sucks...

Well the last 2 days has certainly been interesting in Taiwan. For starters, the day before the presidential elections were to take place, the incumbent president, Chen Shui-Bian and vice-president, Annette Lu were shot at during a campaign trip. Chen suffered a relatively minor stomach wound while Lu had a grazed kneecap. The ever so gracious presidential candidate of the opposing KMT (aka Republican) party Lien Chan, had this to say then:

"The target of the bullets were not specific persons, but democracy, but I believe the Taiwan people won't let the incident, whose real cause has yet to be found out, influence the election."

Of course, now that he's lost the election by about 30000 votes, he's been singing a different tune:

"Such a thin margin is the result of the uncertainties left by yesterday's gunshots the truth of which has yet to be clarified."

Adding:

"It was an unfair election. Therefore, we will file a lawsuit against the election result. We demand the CEC seal all ballot boxes nationwide immediately and wait for the authorities to recount the ballots."

Gracious loser he is not. So I guess Mr. Chan was pretty much just talking outta his ass and didn't really believe that the Taiwanese people were smart enough to not let the shooting influence the vote. And I guess in order to make it a fair election, the government should have gotten someone to shoot Mr. Chan and his running mate as well. Leaving a bigger wound preferably so that they could get more sympathy votes.

The "uncertainties" that he's referring to are the inevitable rumblings that the assassination attempt the day before was actually staged by the DPP (aka the Democrats), proving that conspiratorial wackjobs are not just a US thing. Granted, I'm heavily biased against the KMT. The Chan/Soong ticket is basically Taiwan's version of Bush/Cheney. Chan, while probably a little more intelligent than Bush, has less personality than a wet rag and was also born into his position of wealth and influence; and Soong will do anything to get close to the presidential position (in the 2000 elections, Soong actually came in 2nd, ahead of Chan; think he's not going to chafe about being Chan's VP?).

But anyway, the idea that people are even thinking that the assassination was staged, while not surprising, still offends me greatly. I'm pretty damn sure Ah-Bian doesn't care that much about being re-elected to voluntarily put his life on the line for it. Staging an assassination isn't exactly an exact art, the risk and consequence of failure is a bit daunting to say the least. My guess is that they'll eventually find out that it was just some loony unemployed Chan/Soong supporter that decided to take things into his own hands.

The KMT does have a legitimate beef about the number of invalid ballots however. 3x the amount during the 2000 elections, about 330,000. That's a pretty significant amount and I'd be interested to hear what exactly constitutes an invalid ballot.

So as with the US 2000 elections, a recount is in the works (except not just for Florida) and I'm sure the KMT will drag this along for as long as humanly possible. Apparently Lien Chan's pretty pissed off about losing and the KMT is also demanding the entire election be annulled. Methinks someone got a bit too absorbed in his own party's vote "estimates" and thought he was assured a victory. Here's a news flash for you dumbass, never believe those damn estimates; they mean about as much as Bush saying the world's now a safer place.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on March 20, 2004 5:53 PM.

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