The Presidential Office yesterday said it hoped the international community would respect the country's judicial procedures and trust its democratic foundations, for which the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and thousands of people had fought for decades.
"We hope the international community can understand that the requests made by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
"Some foreign media said that Taiwan's government rejected the pan-blue camp's requests. That is not correct. The government cannot violate the constitutional mechanism, which will just hurt the country's legal system," Wu said.
Wu said that the opposition alliance had a right to launch legal proceedings against the result of the presidential election, but added that the pan-blue camp's leaders should stop its supporters' irrational actions.
"Taiwan's democratic achievements have been credited by the international community, and the international media have praised past elections for being fair and just," Wu said.
"The approach the pan-blue camp is taking right now shows a lack of confidence in Taiwan's judiciary and is reminiscent of how it manipulated the legal system under the previous KMT government," he said.
The pan-blue camp's strategy of neither accepting the election result nor trusting the judicial processes has harmed the country's democratic reputation, Wu said.
"For the time being we must tolerate any provocative actions and just keep calm to prevent any possible conflict between our supporters and the protesters from the pan-blue camp," Wu said.
He also reminded the international community that the pan-blue camp had failed to present any concrete evidence for its accusation of vote-rigging and said that Lien might not be able to end the protests rationally.
"It is easy to call on people to protest in the streets, but it is difficult to call off the demonstrations peacefully," Wu said.
According to an anonymous DPP source, top aides to the president called an emergency meeting after Lien announced that he did not accept the election result and was hoping to have it annulled.
"We realized that this was an unhappy victory, because there would be an emotional reaction from the losers," the aide said yesterday.
"Three steps are necessary to deal with the challenge: First, to prevent any form of conflict; Second, to resolve the event in accordance with judicial processes, which may take months, and finally, President Chen has to personally heal the divisions between ethnic communities," the aide said.
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
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The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
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