governing and opposition parties decided to suspend campaigning – but the government has already said that the election will go ahead as planned on Saturday.
Analysts have been saying that the election is too close to call, and our correspondent in Taiwan says that the shooting makes the result even more unpredictable.
Experts are saying that Mr Chen may now be propelled to a significant victory by a sudden wave of public sympathy.
The Times supplies more background with this article on Miss Taiwan (or, according to the China, Miss Chinese Taipei):
About 70 per cent of the island’s population is native Taiwanese, while the rest are Han Chinese whose families arrived from the mainland after the Kuomintang (KMT) under Chiang Kai-shek lost a civil war against Mao’s Communists in 1949.
For five decades, the KMT imposed a Chinese mindset on Taiwan in preparation for its eventual return to the mainland. Four years ago, long after it became obvious that Communist rule had became permanent, the KMT lost power to President Chen’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has its roots in the predominantly native Taiwanese south of the island.
President Chen, a native Taiwanese, set out to create a local identity. The word “Taiwan” was added to passports next to Taiwan’s official name, Republic of China, and new maps were issued that showed the mainland as a separate country.
Most importantly, President Chen lifted the KMT ban on speaking Taiwanese in schools and instead made language lessons in the island’s native tongue mandatory in primary schools.
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