The Supreme Court yesterday rejected a plea by two opposition leaders to void the 2004 presidential election which President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annett Lu won by a thin margin one day after a shooting incident that left them lightly injured.The ruling drew polar responses as the Democratic Progressive Party government urged respect for the court's decision and the opposition Kuomintang and People First Party questioned the court's impartiality.
I'm not sure who heard this case, but it is clear that most of the justices were appointed under the KMT, under the Lee Teng-hui government and can hardly be sympathetic to Chen Shui-bian. It is clear that any verdict based on evidence will favor the DPP. My favorite part of the Taiwan News report is this paragraph:
The Lien-Soong ticket lost the race by nearly 30,000 ballots, or 0.2 percent of over 1.3 million votes cast. Suspicious of unfair practices, the two opposition leaders had lawyers file two separate suits in April 2004 to invalidate the Chen-Lu victory and the election per se.
After decades of KMT election cheating, they can't imagine a winning election conducted any other way. The irony is so rich you can butter bread with it.
Another report noted:
In the months leading up to the High Court verdict, court personnel questioned more than a thousand election officials, as well as senior military and police officials.
It did describe the case as a "serious challenge" to Taiwan's young democracy, probably true given the KMT's intention of annexing the island to China in the event of victory.
I note that one of the powers of the Supremes is to dissolve those political parties that are violating the Constitution ....interesting implications for the future of the KMT when the Constitution is actually reformed.
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