Source: Taiwan News
The special military status had been due to end at 8 a.m. yesterday, but following the election victory of Chen Shui-bian - a man distrusted by mainland China for his previously pro-independence stance - the military decided to leave additional servicemen placed on duty during the election.
"The new president was just elected," a defense spokesman said.
"The state of alert continues, and it is not clear when it will be lifted. That will be contingent on future developments."
But he said the continued alertness "was by no means heightening combat readiness."
The "heightened alert," which increased the number of servicemen of duty to counter any mainland China war threat, went into effect at 5 p.m. Friday.
Taiwan's armed forces have a fighting strength around 400,000 officers and men, but the spokesman refused to say how many were on duty at any one time.
Mainland China has so far reacted calmly to the election result in which Chen of the traditionally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party took 39.3 percent of the vote, ending the Kuomintang's power stranglehold of more than 50 years.
After weeks of strident threats aimed at scaring Taiwan's voters away from Chen, mainland China has taken a moderate and pragmatic line to his victory.
While warning Taiwan's president-elect that mainland China would never allow his dream of independence, the Communist leadership pointedly refrained from making new threats of war.
Beijing said it would watch the new president intently and wait for him to make a move, saying it was ready to talk as long as he recognized Taiwan was part of mainland China.
But in his victory speech Chen rejected Beijing's "one country, two systems" model used to return Hong Kong and Macau to Chinese rule for reunification.
"We should insist on Taiwan's independent sovereignty," he said.
"This is not just our job, it is our mission as well. We are determined to safeguard this land."
A Defense ministry spokesman said: "There is no sign of any irregular military movement on the other side of the Taiwan Strait" since the election.
Taiwan-mainland China relations plunged to new depths last July when outgoing President Lee Teng-hui insisted ties be defined as a "special state-to-state relationship."
Beijing was infuriated by the statehood assertion which ran counter to the "one China principle," which it said was also respected by Washington and was the basis for peace in the region.
The China Times said yesterday that mainland military aircraft had flown 13,00 sorties in the Taiwan Strait since Lee's statement, as many as the total flown in the area since the Kuomintang withdrew to Taiwan in 1949 after losing mainland China's civil war to the communists led by Mao Zedong.
Following several deadly dogfights in the early years after the split there has been a tacit understanding between the two militaries to avoid flying near the middle of the strait for fear of further clashes.
On Kinmen, a Taiwan-controlled island a few kilometers from the mainland Chinese coast, soldiers were ordered to remain in their barracks on Saturday, but were permitted to take leave yesterday.
A military charter plane to Taipei was full of soldiers going off-duty, and the island's streets were full of soldiers shopping and relaxing.
Mainland China last seriously bombarded Kinmen in June 1960, killing about 100 civilians and soldiers on the island.
Lien Chan, the defeated KMT candidate, ran an ad in the Kinmen Daily yesterday, admitting that the ruling party had suffered a heavy defeat and vowing that it would mount a fight back.
Former Taiwan Provincial Governor James Soong, who on Saturday grabbed 81 percent of the vote on Kinmen, said yesterday he would return there as soon as possible to show his appreciation for the staunch support given him by the islanders.
Meanwhile, the local pro-Chen group said they were elated with the outcome of the presidential election, even though the DPP candidate garnered only 759 votes, just 0.3 percent of the total ballots cast on the island.
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