Associated Press

Taipei, May 14:

Taiwan’s ruling party won elections for a special assembly charged with amending

Taiwan’s constitution today, giving a big boost to President Chen Shui-bian’s policy of

leaning toward independence from China.

With 98 per cent of the ballots counted, the Central Election Commission said the Democratic Progressive Party had won 42.5 per cent of the vote, against 38.9 per cent for the opposition Nationalist Party.

Recent visits to the mainland by two opposition leaders — Lien Chan of the Nationalist Party and James Soong of the People First Party — had put Chen on the defensive, transforming the election of the National Assembly into a test of strength for his ruling party and its independence-leaning policies.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a protracted civil war. Lien and Soong support eventual unification with the mainland but Chen wants to strengthen Taiwan’s status as a self-governing entity — a desire that exasperates Beijing, and changed the nature of today’s poll.

Chen’s supporters had urged followers to vote in large numbers, saying that a vote against the DPP was a vote for eventual unification with China.

The People’s First Party garnered only 6.1 per cent of the vote, coming in fourth

behind the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a pro-independence party, whose spiritual godfather is former President Lee Teng-hui. The TSU won seven per cent of the vote.

President Chen Shui-bian had faced an unexpected test of his policies toward China today.

China was monitoring the outcome to see if Taiwanese public opinion had been swayed away from Chen by Beijing’s lavish courtship of his political rivals. But no mention was made of the election on China’s midday news broadcast.

“In reality, the National Assembly elections have turned into a referendum on the China policies of both the president and opposition leaders,” said Emile Sheng, a political scientist at Taipei’s Soochow University.

In the assembly election, voters chose a party list of delegates to consider a package of

constitutional reforms — reducing the legislature from its present 225 members to 113, extending lawmakers’ terms from three to four years, amending the electoral system to reduce the number of lawmakers per constituency, and enshrining public referenda as the only means for approving future constitutional changes.

Both the DPP and the Nationalists support the changes, and they are expected to be approved by the new National Assembly. “We may not know what the National Assembly members will do after they are elected, but we can use our vote to send a signal to China: we have democracy, so leave us alone,” said one voter, a trading company accountant Wayne Wu, 36.

Others said they had changed their opinion about Chen as he seemed to shift his position between moderate approval and strong condemnation of the opposition leaders’ China trips.