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TAIPEI : Taiwan's presidential frontrunner appealed on Thursday for every last vote as the nation's election race narrowed to a tight finish amid the fallout of China's military crackdown on Tibet.
Ma Ying-jeou of the opposition Kuomintang said he faced a tense battle to beat ruling party chief Frank Hsieh in a crunch vote on Saturday that will decide who leads the island for the next four years.
"We're going to vote after one more day and the election is very tense now. We should all be aware that if Ma Ying-jeou loses one vote, he would lose the election," he told a rally in southern Kaohsiung, referring to himself.
Analysts say China's response to the unrest in Tibet has enabled Hsieh to close the gap on Ma by hammering his proposals for a common market and peace treaty with Beijing.
Ma enjoyed a 20-point advance in the last opinion poll 11 days ago before a pre-election ban took effect, but that was before bloodshed in the Himalayan region focused attention on Taiwan's own future.
The self-ruled island split from the mainland in 1949 but is still claimed by China, and the pro-independence Hsieh has argued that a Ma-led Kuomintang administration would make reunification more likely.
"Ma's lead over Hsieh is narrowing," said George Tsai, a political science professor at Chinese Cultural University.
"The issues of 'one China common market' and Tibet are brewing and the DPP has indeed fared well over the past few days linking Taiwan and Tibet," Tsai added, referring to Hsieh's Democratic Progressive Party.
Still, he said he expected Ma to win by five to six percent on the back of widespread malaise over Taiwan's sluggish economy.
"The economy remains the major concern of the general public," he added.
There was good news for Hsieh, however, who won the endorsement of Taiwan's first democratically elected president, Lee Teng-hui.
Lee, who was handpicked to be president in 1988 but later won elections in 1996, said Hsieh would serve as a balance to a parliament dominated by the KMT, which won January legislative elections in a landslide.
"Democracy is the balance of powers, and as the Kuomintang has an absolute majority in parliament there is no room to counter the party ... which could spell disaster for democracy," he said.
On the campaign trail, Hsieh accused the KMT of buying votes with a scheme to hire polling booth monitors and mobilise voters.
"As the Kuomintang feel their lead has narrowed, they hope to consolidate their slim lead by the vote-buying measures," he told a press conference.
A KMT spokesman flatly denied the vote-buying charges as "groundless."
"Hsieh saying the lead has narrowed is just propaganda to boost the morale of their supporters," Lo Chih-chiang added.
"We must not sit back in campaigning. Every ballot is important to us," he cautioned.
Ma also hit back over criticism of his statements earlier in the week that if the situation in Tibet worsened, as president he would consider forbidding Taiwanese athletes from competing in the Beijing Olympics.
Ma dared Hsieh to follow suit.
"If China continues to crack down on the Tibetan people, and the situation in Tibet continues to worsen, resulting in massive injuries and deaths, and other countries start to boycott, will you still send a delegation?" he said.
Ma has focused his campaign on reviving Taiwan's economy, notably through direct tourism and transport links with China.
He also wants to tap into the vast mainland market for Taiwanese goods and allow Chinese investors to pump funds into the economy back here.
Hsieh also wants closer ties with China but is much more cautious, saying Ma's plan would leave Taiwan's economy vulnerable to being swallowed up. - AFP/ac/de
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