NEW YORK -- On March 20 the governing Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) ticket of Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu won re-election over the pan-blue ticket of Kuomintang (KMT) chairman Lien Chan and the People First Party (PFP) chairman James Soong by a narrow margin of 30,000 votes out of 13 million cast.
The media has focused on the razor-thin victory margin of 0.2 percent, yet Chen's capture of more than 50 percent of the votes was a miracle, considering the three-way battle back in 2000 among Chen, Lien and Soong. Then, Chen won only 39.3 percent against the combined 60 percent tally of the other two. This time Lien and Soong, both born in China, combined their forces to try to defeat Chen. The two-party pan-blue ticket (named after the color of the KMT emblem) was a strange anomaly born of political expediency.
The election took place only one day after Chen and Lu were wounded in a shooting while campaigning. Instead of accepting defeat gracefully, Lien and Soong began making wild accusations, all of which could be disproved or explained away. To cite just four accusations:
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