Taiwan 'Referendum' vetoed by the people

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, March 21, 2004

Taiwan 'Referendum' vetoed by the people

The so-called "March 20 referendum", which Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian had willfully promoted despite strong opposition from home and overseas, ended on March 20 and turned out to be invalid because the number of voters taking part in the "referendum" failed to reach half of the total number of the eligible voters.

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The Taiwan Work Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council issued a statement Saturday saying that the so-called "peace referendum" held by the Taiwan authorities goes against the will of the people and is doomed to failure.

The statement says: "On March 20, the Taiwan authorities willfully held the so-called 'peace referendum' in a provocative attempt to undermine cross-Straits relations and split the motherland. The referendum turned out to be invalid. Facts have proven that this illegal act goes against the will of the people. Any attempt to separate Taiwan from China is doomed to failure."

Taiwan election causes disputes

China's mainland is watching closely on the developments in the leader election of Taiwan region, a spokesman with the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council said on Saturday.

The vote ended on Saturday, but one side of the candidates claimed it was unfair and decided to file a lawsuit to nullify the election, according to media in Taiwan.

"We are closely following the developments," said the spokesman in response to the a request for comment on the disputes in Taiwan leader election.

According to the result released by the Taiwan election authorities, Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu, candidates for Democratic Progressive Party, won 6,471,970 votes, or 50.11 percent of the total; while Lien Chan and James Soong, of the coalition of the Kuomintang and People First Party, won 49.89 percent of the votes, totaling 6,442,452.

Lien and Soong made strong announcements immediately after the election to call into question of the result, saying that "it was an unfair election" and there were "numerous clouds of suspicions"in the run-up to the election.

The coalition of Lien and Soong demanded that all the ballot boxes be sealed up and said they were going to "file a petition tonullify the election."

Source: Xinhua

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