Today at work, at about 4 pm, my co-worker asked me if I knew.

Knew what?

Chen Shui-bian. You know?

Yeah, I know. What about him?

She pantomimed to me that he'd been shot. I was dumbfounded. Taiwan is just not that kind of country. I've never been afraid while wandering around the streets drunk in the wee small hours of the morning with the equivalent of a couple hundred dollars in my wallet. Sure, everyone's had something stolen, but they don't pull a gun on you and do it while you're watching.

The TV news in Taiwan has, predictably, been showing an endless tape loop of the motorcade he was driving in, with a little red circle showing the hole in the window, and then another circle showing the part where the president puts his hands down over his abdomen and feels the blood. Media reports suggested that President Chen first thought he was hit with a stray firecracker. He was traveling in an open 4x4 with the VP at his side, while mile-long strings of firecrackers were going off next to the truck. That just goes to show how inconceivable something like this is here.

Of course, there are crazies in Taiwan, but most of them don't have guns. The Chinese conspiracists think that Chen had it done on purpose to win sympathy ahead of tomorrow's election. I'm sure the local conspiracists think that the slimy, wife-beating, tremendously wealthy, and personality-lacking candidate for the Nationalists (KMT) probably had something to do with it. I personally think it was just some loony who probably blames the president for his divorce.

Everytime CNN starts a sentence with "President Chen and Vice-President Annette Lu were shot..." I feel guilty, but I have to laugh. It's such a savage word, and hard to imagine in a country like this. What's even stranger is that they waited until the day before the election to do it. If I were going to shoot a president, I'd at least wait to make sure they were still going to be the president tomorrow.

If he wins a second term tomorrow, I'll be relieved. Politics don't affect me here, but the other guy looks like a Chinese mix of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, with a personality to match. I'm sure Lien Chan, the opposition, just wishes everyone would shut up about democracy and let the KMT get back to some serious martial law.

Stay tuned...