Chen wins, Lien demands recount
Incumbent President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and running mate Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) have won the election by 2,9518 votes. Central Election Commission Chairman George Huang (黃石城) made a formal announcement of the results at 9:20 pm. The Chen-Lu ticket won a total of 6,471,970 votes while the opposition ticket, featuring Lien Chan (連戰) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)and James Soong (宋楚瑜) of the People First Party (PFP), won 6,442,452 votes, Huang said.
The turnout for the presidential election was 80.28 percent.
Responding to the opposition demand for invalidation of the results and a recount of the votes, Huang said the opposition must file an application with the court in accordance with the Election and Recall Law.
Speaking to crowds of supporters in front of the KMT headquarters earlier, Lien and Soong called the election "unfair", citing that the election was held under suspicious circumstances.
They were referring to the assassination attempt on Chen and Lu on Friday, one day before the vote. Chen and Lu suffered gunshot wounds in the incident in southern Taiwan. The incident is believed to have swayed some voters to
Chen's camp.
Chen won the election by a margin of around 0.2 percent. Lien and Soong ran separately in the previous presidential election in 2000 and won a combined 58 percent. A Lien-Soong joint ticket this time meant an extremely tough race for Chen.
In his victory speech, Chen thanked the opposition for its "criticism and instructions" and vowed to listen to different opinions to promote Taiwan's democracy, solidarity and harmony. Chen did not respond to the opposition demand of a recount in his speech.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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