Taiwan ROC '08 election

Taiwan ruling DPP party concedes defeat :cool:

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Ruling party candidate Frank Hsieh conceded defeat in Taiwan's presidential election, his spokesman said Saturday.

"We are accepting that we lost," Hsieh Hsin-ni said.

With almost all votes counted, opposition candidate Ma Ying-Jeou 馬英九 has a 17 percentage point lead over Hsieh.

Ma won over voters with promises to expand economic ties with China while protecting the island from being swallowed up politically by its giant communist neighbor

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080322/...uGdR_UQ7.s0NUE

The Central Election Commission also said two referendums calling on the government to work for the island's entry into the United Nations failed. China had warned that the referendums threatened stability in the region.

Ma has based his campaign on promises to reverse the pro-independence direction of outgoing President Chen Shui-bian and leverage China's white-hot economic boom to re-energize Taiwan's ailing high-tech economy.

He has proposed a formal peace treaty with Beijing that would demilitarize the Taiwan Strait, 100-mile-wide waterway that separates the two heavily armed sides. But he has drawn the line at unification, promising it would not be discussed during his presidency.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080322/...t6y.TKrqes0NUE

Taiwan is finally a full-fledged DEMOCRACY,more power to people of Taiwan :-)

The 57 year-old boyish good looks 馬英九 won this clean presidential election by a landslide.

A few months back,there was a controversy surrounded his removal of " reunification provision " from KMT Party agenda.

8 fruitless years of DPP rule put Taiwan's economy in the dumps. Many people over there feel despair,no foreign investments & good pay jobs are scarce.