Election, Part 3

Every weekend since the election, the KMT (losers) have held rallies in Taipei. Every one of them has ended in a near-riot. Last weekend, the police finally turned on the water cannons. The KMT are hoping to encourage civil unrest to claim that President Chen isn't doing his job. An editorial in the Taipei Times today suggested that the KMT even encouraged the military to launch a coup to remove Chen and install--guess who? They also suggested that some of the gangsters who were arrested at the rally last week with firebombs and other weapons were encouraged by the party to create the extra unrest. But for the most part, life goes on as normal around the island.

They want to have another rally/riot next week. And will they get a permit? Probably. The mayor of Taipei is also the head of the KMT. He's torn between his job as mayor and his job as chief of the losing party.

And in other post-election news, a team of experts from the U.S. was brought to Taiwan to investigate the pre-election shooting of President Chen and his VP in a motorcade. Their conclusions: That the president was definitely shot, that he didn't do it himself, and that the hole in the windshield was caused by the bullet that hit the VP in the knee. Those things seem pretty obvious to most everyone, but the conspiracy theories would suggest otherwise. And in a final insult, the KMT suggested that these experts, whom they themselves recommended, have been duped by the ruling DPP (Democratic Progressive Party).

I wouldn't write about this stuff if it weren't truly news of the weirdest kind.