Taiwan squabbles over vote recount

TAIWAN’S political turmoil showed few signs of letting up yesterday as the island’s two biggest political parties squabbled about how to do a speedy vote recount for last weekend’s disputed presidential election.

Hundreds of people blocked the boulevard in front of the presidential office for a fourth straight day, protesting President Chen Shui-bian's narrow win in Saturday's presidential race. Chen's margin of victory was only 0.2%.

Chen's challenger, Lien Chan, immediately demanded the vote nullified which the High Court rejected yesterday and a re-count.

Although Lien has provided little evidence of errors or wrongdoing, Chen's Democratic Progressive Party has agreed to a re-count.

The ruling party proposed a bill Tuesday that would amend the election law to trigger a re-count whenever a candidate wins by less than 1% of the votes. The proposed law would apply retroactively to Saturday's race.

After wavering on the proposal, Lien's Nationalists rejected it yesterday.

"We won't accept an administrative recount because it would use the same people who did the original vote count. We want to have judges conduct all the recounting," said a Nationalist Party spokesman.