Taipei, March 27 (CNA) President Chen Shui-bian said Saturday that his administration will deal with the ongoing mass demonstration in front of the Presidential Office under the principles of "listening, understanding, law and union."
Noting that he has ever engaged with the opposition movement, President Chen said that he can understand demonstration participants' feelings, so his administration will treat, with love, leniency and tolerance, the post-election protest staged by the opposition "pan-blue alliance" of the Kuomintang and the People First Party.
Chen voiced the hope that all participants in the demonstration will express their appeals in a rational way and that the protest activity will end peacefully. "Taiwan has endured a great deal of hardships on its way to democracy, so the country's hard-gained democratic achievements should be cherished and protected meticulously by all citizens, " the president said.
Saying that he is president of all the people of Taiwan, Chen vowed to do whatever he can to unite the nation and all the people of Taiwan, which he said is his top duty and obligation.
As for the "pan-blue alliance's" demand for a recount of the election ballots, Chen said that the president-elect and vice president-elect were formally announced by the Central Election Commission, so a judicial recount is expected to start soon.
Touching on the alliance's suspicions that the March 19 gun attack on Chen and his running mate -- Vice President Annette Lu -- was staged to win voters' support for the Chen-Lu ticket, the president said he supports State Public Prosecutor-General Lu Ren-fa's proposal that Dr. Henry Lee, a world-renowned Chinese-American forensic expert, be invited to join an independent forensic panel to get to the bottom of the shooting to put an end to the election controversy as soon as possible.
With respect to the rival camp's claim that the activation of the national security mechanism following the shooting barred many soldiers and police officers from casting their ballots in the March 20 election, Chen explained that only one-ninth of the soldiers were required to stay in their barracks because of the national security mechanism activation, and he added that the measure was not improper.