The shooting of the son of the Kuomintang's honorary chairman may have been staged by underground bookmakers hoping to make huge profits through illegal bets on Taiwan's municipal elections.
Wang Cho-chun, director of Taiwan's National Police Agency, told legislators yesterday that police had not ruled out that possibility. He said the gunman who shot Sean Lien Sheng-wen, son of Lien Chan, at close range at a campaign rally in Taipei county on Friday night, claimed to have shot the wrong person. But, he said, Sean Lien did in fact appear to have been the primary target.
Wang said, when asked by legislators' whether the election-eve shooting was staged by local gangs to try to change poll results to win bets: 'This is a direction both police and prosecutors are looking at.'
According to Taiwanese media, underground bookmakers were holding as much as NT$3 billion (HK$760 million) in bets. With many people betting on election victories for the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, the bookmakers were looking at huge profits if the KMT held onto its three mayoral posts.
The ruling party had been expected to lose at least one of the three posts - Taipei, Xinbei (formerly Taipei) county and Taichung.
DPP legislators said yesterday that the shooting had boosted the KMT vote by about 10 per cent as the result of sympathy votes, allowing it to hang on to all three mayoral posts.