After election, Taiwan court seals ballot boxes

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan's high court ordered the sealing of all ballot boxes today, one day after President Chen Shui-bian claimed victory in a close race. As violent protests erupted around the island, the high court said it needed to preserve evidence, although no recount was immediately ordered, as challenger Lien Chan demanded. There were 13,000 polling booths around the island. The court order came after Lien, a former vice president, said more than 330,000 ballots from Saturday's vote were spoiled and there were too many unanswered questions about the assassination attempt on the president and his running mate, Vice President Annette Lu.

The candidates were slightly wounded by gunfire while campaigning in southern Taiwan.

Chen won Saturday by 30,000 votes, although he lost a referendum on strengthening the island's military.

Court spokesman Wen Yao-yuan, who is also a judge, announced the order on television Sunday as hundreds of angry Taiwanese gathered outside the presidential office waving flags and blaring air horns to protest the election's outcome. However, the protesters remained peaceful.

Chen won with 50.1 percent of the vote, the Central Election Commission said. Lien of the Nationalist Party received 49.9 percent. About 13 million ballots were cast. Turnout was 80 percent, the commission said.

The U.S. State Department acknowledged the disputed results while congratulating the Taiwanese "for having conducted a democratic election campaign."

"We are confident that both sides and their supporters will remain calm, and that they will use the established legal mechanisms to resolve any questions about the election results," a department statement said.

While claiming victory in the presidential contest, Chen clearly lost a simultaneous referendum to strengthen Taiwan's military. The ballot question -- fiercely opposed by China, which saw it as a rehearsal for a vote on Taiwan independence -- failed because not enough voters participated.

Demonstrators in Taipei stayed peaceful, but angry crowds scuffled with police, broke windows and pushed down barriers early Sunday in Taiwan's second- and third-largest cities. The demonstrators claimed that the alleged irregularities had tilted the election results.

The government deployed riot police as it tried to head off a political crisis that could pose a serious challenge to Taiwan's young democracy, which has had only two other direct presidential elections in the past eight years.

In Taiwan's No. 2 city, Kaohsiung, hundreds of protesters rammed a courthouse barricade with a truck as police tried to keep the barricade upright.

One officer beat on the vehicle's windshield with a club.

"The whole process was an uneven game," said physician Chi Yung-wen. "We are asking the judge to recount the vote according to the election law."

Crowds also became violent in the third-largest city, Taichung. Hundreds of people pushed over a metal barrier at a courthouse, shoved their way through a police line and began smashing windows with their bare hands. Many chanted, "Check the ballots!" as police tried to restore order.

In Taipei, delivery driver Mei Chung-kang said the Lien supporters were gathering because they feared the government would not allow a recount.

"We don't think they're going to listen," Mei said. "The sooner we check these votes the better."

The hot tempers and scuffles were part of two days of political drama that began with the shooting of Chen and Lu.

A bullet grazed Chen's stomach and Lu was wounded in the knee as they rode in a Jeep. Police have not identified any suspects.

Before the election, Lien said he trusted that Taiwanese voters would be rational and not let the shooting cause them to cast a sympathy vote for Chen. But after losing, he told a crowd outside his campaign headquarters: "This was an unfair election."

Some have suggested that Chen's shooting was staged to swing the election in his favor.

"The gunshots looked very fishy," said Su Chi, a senior campaign official.

Lien did not go that far, but he demanded a full investigation of the attack's effect on the election.

His running mate, James Soong, added, "There are clouds of suspicions around this election."

The shooting was being treated as a criminal case and not a conspiracy or an attack that involved China, prosecutor Wang Sen-jung said Saturday.

Although Chen won re-election, the referendum he was pushing failed because many voters boycotted it. The ballot asked whether the island should step up defenses against China and seek talks with Beijing. China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, and China wants the island to rejoin the mainland.

Beijing has threatened to attack if Taiwan seeks a permanent split.

The opposition Nationalist Party argued that Chen did not have the legal authority to call the referendum and successfully rallied most people to skip the vote.

Chen shrugged off the defeat in his victory speech, saying people did not seem to understand the referendum's contents. But he appealed to China to respect the election.

"It is a new era for solidarity and harmony and a new era for peace across the Taiwan Strait," Chen said. "We sincerely ask the Beijing authorities across the strait to view the election results from a positive perspective, to accept the democratic decision of the Taiwanese people."

But Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement the referendum failed because it went "against the will of the people," China's state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

"Any attempt to separate Taiwan from China is doomed to failure," the office said.

It would have been hard to find candidates more different than Lien and Chen.

Chen, 53, grew up in a poor village and graduated from Taiwan's top law school. He got into politics by defending dissidents during the martial law era, which ended in 1987. He has been a legislator and Taipei mayor.

Lien, 67, belongs to one of Taiwan's richest families. The former political science professor served as an ambassador, foreign minister, premier and vice president in the former Nationalist government.