Tens of thousands of furious opposition party supporters staged an illegal rally outside the presidential palace in Taiwan yesterday to demand an investigation of allegations that president Chen Shui-bian staged his own shooting in order to win re-election on Saturday.
With violent demonstrations in several other cities after Chen’s razor-thin victory, the president’s office attempted to end the turmoil by releasing footage of him being operated on in a hospital after the attack.
Chen, who wound up cross-straits tensions during his first term by pressing for democracy and independence from China, beat his only opponent Lien Chan of the Kuomintang party, with a majority of less than 0,2% of the 16,5-million electorate.
The 30 000-vote margin of victory has convinced the Lien camp that the result was determined by the 330 000 invalidated ballots and a sympathy vote generated by the mysterious assassination attempt on the president and vice-president Annette Lu on the final day of the campaign.
No suspects have been named, but the mystery is not so much a whodunnit as a whatwasit: a genuine attempt to kill Chen or a stage-managed piece of political drama designed to swing a close race?
The conspiracy theorists are suspicious that the assassination attempt was not filmed, that no suspects have been detained and that the only doctors who have seen the wounds were members of the president’s entourage. Although Chen’s camp released pictures of a four-inch stomach wound on Friday, their opponents say the body could have been anyone’s. They also point out that the attack took place in the president’s birthplace of Tainan, where his support and influence on local politics is strongest.
Until the doubts are cleared up, Lien has refused to concede defeat. ”The March 20 presidential election was an unfair election,” Lien told a crowd of 20 000 flag-waving supporters in front of the presidential office. ”Why don’t we trust the government? Because there are too many things under a cloud of suspicion.”
The Kuomintang candidate, who favours a more conciliatory stance towards China, is demanding a recount and an independent probe of the shooting, but the authorities have made only partial concessions. Yesterday, the high court ordered ballot boxes to be sealed to preserve evidence of suspected polling irregularities, but the electoral commission has declared the result final.
In an attempt to allay suspicions that the gun attack was faked, the presidential office released video footage of Chen walking into hospital, but his apparent good health, a seeming lack of blood on his clothes and his ability to chat by mobile phone while on the operating table have only fuelled the doubts of his opponents.
”He walked in OK and we still haven’t seen his wound,” said Kelvin Chen, who attended the rally. ”The shooting was a trick. We are very angry.”
But, even in Taiwan’s heated political climate, it would be an astonishing gamble for the president to stage an attack on himself and the vice-president amid a large crowd of onlookers at a time when he still had a hope of winning the election.
Police say they are looking for two gunmen, but they have not named any suspects. Hospital officials in Tainan have promised Lien’s camp that they will provide investigators with the president’s medical records, X-rays and eight hours of videotape from the emergency room.
The cloud this has cast over Chen’s victory is likely to be seen as good news by the Communist party in Beijing, which has been infuriated by the Taiwan president’s push for independence and embarrassed by the rapid development of the island’s democracy.
But China is aware that any public criticism only plays into Chen’s hands. Instead the government focussed on the failure of Taiwan’s first referendum, which was held in tandem with the election. The vote on cross-strait relations was seen by Beijing as a precedent for a future independence plebiscite – a move that it warned would result in war. But the referendum failed to get the 50% participation needed to be declared valid.
Calling the vote ”a provocative attempt to undermine cross-strait relations and split the motherland”, the Communist party gloated that it turned out invalid.
”Facts have proven that this illegal act goes against the will of the people. Any attempt to separate Taiwan from China is doomed to failure.” – Guardian Unlimited Â