The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered a landslide
defeat to its rival Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan's "legislature"
elections Saturday.
The KMT won 81 of the 113 seats in the elections, beating the
DPP which got 27 seats.
Two seats went to the New Party. The People First Party, the
Taiwan Solidarity Union and a candidate without party affiliation
each took one seat, according to the ballot counting authority.
Chen Shui-bian announced later in the evening that he resigned
his post as DPP chairman to take responsibility for what he termed
the most disastrous defeat since the DPP was founded.
Two referendums tied to the election, one against corruption and
the other demanding the KMT to return what was said to be assets
illegally obtained from the people, were announced invalid, as the
voters' turnout rate did not reach 50 percent.
Nearly 300 candidates are competing for the legislative seats in
more than 70 precincts across the island.
The voting progressed smoothly between 8:00 and 16:00 in more
than 14,400 polling stations across the island. About 58 percent of
the registered voters turned out to cast their ballots.
But in Nantou County, a polling station was short of more than
400 ballots and several cases concerning the violation of voting
rules were reported in some parts of Taiwan.
Voters cast two ballots for the first time in the election
history -- one for a specific "legislator" candidate in their
precinct and the other for the party of their choice. Some
"legislators" will be chosen by the parties in accordance with the
percentage of votes they got.
Taiwan's "legislature", called "legislative Yuan," was
streamlined this year from 225 seats to 113 in an effort to improve
efficiency.
(Xinhua News Agency January 13, 2008)