Former Taiwanese vice-president Annette Lu Hsiu-lien has called for a fresh inquiry into a mysterious shooting incident during the presidential election campaign five years ago.
Ms Lu, who retired in May, said the incident - which many claimed had changed the election result - still troubled her today, not only because previous police findings were too incredible but because many questions were left unanswered.
'All I want to know is nothing but the truth,' she said yesterday while promoting her book, 3-19 Shooting Re-examined, which hits bookshops on Saturday.
During a re-election campaign trip in the southern city of Tainan with Chen Shui-bian on March 19, 2004, a day before the election, a bullet struck Ms Lu's right kneecap, and another grazed Chen's abdomen. Chen won the election the next day by a margin of 0.2 per cent.
The pan-blue coalition - led on a joint ticket by Lien Chan of the Kuomintang and James Soong Chu-yu of the People First Party - suggested later that the shooting was staged to canvass sympathy votes, which allowed the Chen-Lu ticket to win re-election. But the Chen government closed the case in early 2005 after naming a drowned man as a possible assailant.
Suspecting she was the primary target, Ms Lu suggested the shooting could have been staged by any side, including her own.
'Four sides - the red, blue, green and black sides - all had a motive to stage the shooting,' she said, referring to the mainland, the Kuomintang, her own pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party and a local gambling ring.